Derek Waterman's Spectacular CATO

Derek posted these photo's over on the Facebook "The CATO Club" page. The second photo is pretty spectacular when you look at the various parts of the rocket.

The flaming nose cone, the shock cord stretched tight, the motor casing puffing smoke, the bouncing flaming rocket internals. and all this before the rocket clears the launch rod.

He said it was an E9 that caused the carnage.

No surprise it was a E9, since they are pretty famous for CATO's. Great shots though.

Why are the E9 not recalled and all returned to Estes?

Even for an E9, that's pretty spectacular. I don't think I'd seen one where the propellant grain blew out both ends of the engine before.

Jim

Graphic example of why NAR sets following

For model rockets, the “safe distance” depends on the total power of all motors being ignited on the pad: 15 feet for 30 N-sec or less and 30 feet for more than 30 N-sec.

Jim Hinton said:

Even for an E9, that's pretty spectacular. I don't think I'd seen one where the propellant grain blew out both ends of the engine before.

Jim

Click to expand...

We had one happen last year with a saucer style rocket. It was pretty impressive. 16:47 in the video here.

crossfire said:

Why are the E9 not recalled and all returned to Estes?

Click to expand...

For every popping E9, there's 20 more that orked just fine. I haven't had a problem ith them

Nytrunner said:

For every popping E9, there's 20 more that orked just fine. I haven't had a problem ith them

Click to expand...

Good point, although Ii it truly were 1 in 20 they probably would be recalled. Estes makes large quantities of motors, especially compared to HPR motors. I suspect the percentage of catoed e9s is low, but we’ll probably never know. They’re no longer in production anyway.

I've flown 180 E9's NO catos.

Rocketjunkie said:

I've flown 180 E9's NO catos.

Click to expand...

And I've flown probably 20 E9s and had three catos. People keep saying it's a small percentage, but why is it only E9s we keep talking about? We get E9 threads all the time, but when was the last time someone reported a B6-4 or a C11-3?

So if the number of E9s blowing is small, it is still larger than any other motor designation that I am aware of.

My best E9 video

As may have been mentioned, E9's are no longervin ptoduction.

Extra flight points for the nose cone under thrust !

Flyfalcons said:

We had one happen last year with a saucer style rocket. It was pretty impressive. 16:47 in the video here.

Click to expand...

that was! the comanche at 18:32 was crazy!

JJSR said:

My best E9 video

Click to expand...

Oh wow, that one is amazing....

JJSR said:

My best E9 video

Click to expand...

If this was a contest... you'd be holding the 1st place trophy.

Was the rocket damaged at all?

JJSR said:

My best E9 video

Click to expand...

Impressive- !!!!
One of my many is my avatar pic-

lakeroadster said:

If this was a contest... you'd be holding the 1st place trophy.

Was the rocket damaged at all?

Click to expand...

Oddly, no, the rocket wasn't damaged.
The chute didn't get much either.

My Resistor 224 a 2 motor cluster (Heavenly Hobbies kit) didn't survive

JJSR said:

My Resistor 224 a 2 motor cluster (Heavenly Hobbies kit) didn't survive

Click to expand...

The "Holy Cross" of cato's.... Thanks for sharing!

tomsteve said:

that was! the comanche at 18:32 was crazy!

Click to expand...

The Comanche3 upscale belonged to Jim Pommert, the Patriot a couple of rockets before had a motor issue either no thrust ring or tje motor mount failed to hold (iirc), and the Sublime that lawn darted lived to fly another day. All 3 were from last years TriCities Rocketeers SodBlaster 2019. Nice work Ryan.