I skipped NARAM-13 because it is not fair to always convince the family to take their weekly vacation at NARAM. I did do 12, 14, and 15. The FSI D18 thing is all on the contestants, They should have known better, but NAR S&T bears some of the blame. The FSI motors being crap is a fair assessment. The common advice was to static fire one motor and then decide what to do with the other two in the pack. Nevertheless, the motors were different and fun. I was lucky and had few problems. The E5 was great fun, but a delay/ejection failure shortened my favorite Big Bertha. A 5:1 ogive restored the length. My favorite period was when the E5 was briefly contest certified as a D. I flew a large Groundhog with the E5, but to get the delay I wanted I clustered it with an A3-6t. The A3 catoed, severing all the deployment cords. The D20 was my preferred choice in D eggloft. I think I flew 6 F100 motors. half used the FSI igniter, and half used an electric match, with no failures.
It was the old FSI tubes that were crap. They were heavy and lumpy with overlapped seams. Sanding them down weakened the tube, and filling them in took lots of primer/filler. Later kits were more like the Estes/Euclid tubes.