Jason's Motor Porn Thread

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Some old Aerotech motors...
18 mm E45 and F55 (50 N-s)Aerotech E&F-1a.jpgAerotech E&F-2a.jpg
E30 in retail packagingAerotech E30a.jpg
29 mm F20Aerotech F20-1a.jpgAerotech F20-2a.JPG
H340, 54 mm early version of Warp-9Aerotech H340-1a.jpgAerotech H340-2a.JPG
38 mm I132, wish they would bring this backAerotech I132-1a.jpgAerotech I132-2a.JPG
 
Apogee 10.5 mm BP B2 Apogee B2-2a.jpgApogee B2-3a.JPG
A collection of Apogee C10 and C4 Apogee C&Da.jpg
My last D3 Apogee D3-2a.jpg
And some Ellis 24 mm E12 Ellis E12a.jpg
 
I picked up this motor from Bruce Kelly at BALLS 2013 along with 2 others.
It's an IBCO 54 mm K675. The other 2 worked well with altimeter deployment.
IBCO K675-1a.jpgIBCO K675-2a.jpgIBCO K675-3a.jpg

Video of flight [YOUTUBE]eFjAajU0Iq0[/YOUTUBE]
 
Wow Tom. You have an awesome collection! I suppose that's to be expected:) That USR sparky is crazy. The 18mm F55 is super cool too. Actually flew one and have the case (posted here).

Hope to see you out at Camden this year!
 
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Len B said:
I remember a friend of mine had an F-72. THAT was a nozzle.
I think I have an F101 kicking around somewhere. Hmmm.
Click to expand...

Those were both great motors! I stuck an F101 into an Estes RTF model. I learned about two things; fin flutter (more of a buzzzzzz), and drag separation (added nose weight to compensate for the motor). Just after the thrust ended, the nose cone went on its way, then thermalled away under a 24" chute - the body almost landed back on the pad. There was a thin white line at the base of each fin in the plastic (styrene?) fin can from the stress of the flutter.
 
Here is a weird thing I ran into in an old issue of American Spacemodeling (11/88). This pic shows a "White Lightning" prototype that has a very different look than the WL we all know. Someone (I forget who) had mentioned earlier in the thread the one of the first versions of WL had sparks...looks like he was right!

WL.jpg
 
J Blatz said:
Here is a weird thing I ran into in an old issue of American Spacemodeling (11/88). This pic shows a "White Lightning" prototype that has a very different look than the WL we all know. Someone (I forget who) had mentioned earlier in the thread the one of the first versions of WL had sparks...looks like he was right!

View attachment 285030
Click to expand...

Wow, nice find!!
 
Great Find!
According to that long ago Magnum Ad..it had a "small Pinkish Flame".
Ross even called it out as... "before White Lightning"..
 
J Blatz said:
Here is a weird thing I ran into in an old issue of American Spacemodeling (11/88). This pic shows a "White Lightning" prototype that has a very different look than the WL we all know. Someone (I forget who) had mentioned earlier in the thread the one of the first versions of WL had sparks...looks like he was right!

View attachment 285030
Click to expand...

The 'original' White Lightning motor propellant did have sparks in the exhaust.

The first WL motor was the F41 as I recalled.
This propellant worked fine in motors with the graphite nozzles.
When AeroTech went to molded plastic nozzles, this original WL propellant eroded the nozzles badly and affected performance.
Also, I think we went through a run of bad casing at the time resulting in a higher than normal number of motor failures.

All of this resulted in a change to the WL propellant to what we have today.
 
I'm glad we ended up with the WL formulation we have now! And now we have Metalstorm so that takes care of the sparky white:)

Now if someone could dig up a photo of one of those Korey Kline Visijets in action...
 
@Initiator001 - Thanks for the info!

Super interesting to me that Gary was willing to try a "sparky" back in 88 but not for nearly 20 years after that. AT was late to the game with sparkies, after USR, Teeling, AMW, CTI, DPS, and others. This was obviously not because sparkies are hard to make...must have been other considerations.
 
J Blatz said:
@Initiator001 - Thanks for the info!

Super interesting to me that Gary was willing to try a "sparky" back in 88 but not for nearly 20 years after that. AT was late to the game with sparkies, after USR, Teeling, AMW, CTI, DPS, and others. This was obviously not because sparkies are hard to make...must have been other considerations.
Click to expand...

I'm sure the sparks were not intended , but rather a byproduct of the large mag chips being used , hence the horrible erosion on the non graphite novels.

Eric
 
JStitz said:
I remember an old Magnum ad that had an anouncement of the "Original".."before White Lightning" run of G Motors. He said it had low smoke and a "Pinkish Flame"...might have been a run of old G-80's..?..1994?.. ..Jason?
Click to expand...

I reached out to "Mr. R" regarding this. He had some interesting stuff to say:

Regarding classic propellant:

"Classic was the the non-metallized formulation I originally developed in the early '80s for some of the first AeroTech motors......we and others started using the term "Classic" after the effects propellants became popular, probably in the mid-'90s."

And the kicker!! -- "We are planning to introduce some new motors in the near future using this formulation"

Regarding the early White Lighting variant from photo above (I sent the photo):

"Actually the sparks from that demo were a result of using a higher percentage of aluminum than can be completely combusted inside a small motor, Vern Estes saw that flight and advised me to reformulate so that there were no visible sparks. I decided to heed his advice and the result was the White Lightning that we all know and love. True story!!"

How bout that?!

EDIT: cleaned up double post
 
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Some interesting stuff to add! My last "Classic AeroTech F-motor" (I have two with plastic nozzles as well...) The "B7 competition motor" fun for your mosquito. A cousin of that was made but not sold..."B12 coreburner" also a C26... The E30-p is the last one ever made, newer design delays would not fit in the case and maintain the 2 3/4" length. The plan was to cluster it with 6 x C6-7's... The E28's were a test with white lightning. One of the last made F55's from the batch flown at night with Chuck Mund's slotted disk camera system at Eldorado Dry Lake Supersonic trials. (Bummer that the equipment and the raw data was destroyed in the fire...)
20160319_154522.jpg20160319_154701.jpg

Scott Pearce....more to follow...
 
Scott S said:
Here's 3 versions of an Aerotech G125. 2 have dates but 1 doesn't so I'm not sure where it fell in the transformation. The 1987 version has the nozzle and delay section flush with the end of the casing. The 1988 version has the nozzle flush but the delay extends beyond the casing. The last motor has the nozzle extending from the casing but the delay is recessed.

View attachment 277212

View attachment 277210

View attachment 277211


Any incite into why each version turned out the way it did?

Love hearing about the background to hows these evolved. Thanks all.
Click to expand...

Basic differences...due to delay material design. Delay on left one produced almost no visible smoke, middle one had larger diameter smokey delay, where the extended part could fit past a thrust ring, right one using the standard design for all the motors at that time using same manufacturing parts and sizes. Date codes were replaced with a lot code due to the stigma that manufacture date, (indicating age) could mean motors could fail due to self life. (Composite motors are not as subject to problems due to age as black powder motors were due to temperature cycling and de-bonding of the casings from the black powder. Remember D13's and certain lots of b3-7m's.
 
Thanks for posting Scott. There's a lot of stuff on this thread you might have some commentary on...

beeblebrox said:
Some interesting stuff to add! My last "Classic AeroTech F-motor" (I have two with plastic nozzles as well...) The "B7 competition motor" fun for your mosquito. A cousin of that was made but not sold..."B12 coreburner" also a C26... The E30-p is the last one ever made, newer design delays would not fit in the case and maintain the 2 3/4" length. The plan was to cluster it with 6 x C6-7's... The E28's were a test with white lightning. One of the last made F55's from the batch flown at night with Chuck Mund's slotted disk camera system at Eldorado Dry Lake Supersonic trials. (Bummer that the equipment and the raw data was destroyed in the fire...)
View attachment 285497View attachment 285498

Scott Pearce....more to follow...
Click to expand...
 
Bummer I don't have pictures, but the cousin of the F10...The E6, was the inspiration for the H5 motor. 40second burn time. Developed for the monocopter. A small, ooops BIG problem was discovered..centrifugal force caused the char layer in the casing to sluff off the side of the motor towards the center of rotation of the monocopter causing the casing to weaken and blow up at about 30 seconds. One of these was flown minimum diameter in Phoenix AZ, at Orbital Sciences, the rocket dissapeared from view long before burnout and was out of audible range before burnout as well, estimated altitude 15000ft. low speed cruiser!!!


Scott Pearce
 
:dark:
Initiator001 said:
The AeroTech 29mm G300 motor was pretty amazing.
All that power and it burned less than a second!

But, it wasn't enough for Scott Pearce.
The G300 had a total impulse of around 120 N-sec.
Scott wanted a fast burn 'G' motor with a full 160 N-sec impulse.

Scott went to work on designing a super-G300 motor.

He would use the same propellant as the G300 but try as he might he could not get more performance out of a motor with a 29mm case.
Too many issues.

So Scott went to a 38mm motor diameter case and came up with a workable motor which became the G345.

I saw Scott fly several of these motors and was always impressed with their performance.

Scott liked to fly the G345 motor in a modified AeroTech Mustang kit (Scott is the designer of the AT Mustang model).
The kit was stock except for a 38mm motor mount.
That thing would scoot!
Scott named that model the Mustang GT.

View attachment 277790
Click to expand...

The G345 was also used as a booster stage for an ugly rocket flown several times at lucerne...G345 lower stage to I95 upper stage. ist stage minimum diameter, second stage 2.6" diameter. Solved staging...no electronics, no fuse, light both motors at the same time, booster burns out just as upper stage kicks in...

Scott Pearce
 
marcusSRG said:
Visijets!! This reminded me they were Korey Kline motors, not AT. Anyone have a pic of one in action? Hear they had blue flame, dark smoke and sparks.

And I remember reading about those dragon rockets. Wasn't the exhaust plume on those "enhanced" so that it resembled dragons breath? ;)
Click to expand...


Dragon rockets fed liquid gasoline out the bottom of the rocket to be ignited by the rocket motors...didn't work too well, most of the gas didn't burn, you got puffs of flame but no continuous fire trail...

you did not read this...lol
 

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