Has anybody tried MJG Technologies BP starters?

[J Blatz]

I have use the MJG Firewires and have to say the recent vintage have been very reliable. I see they are now making BP starters that look like the Q2G2. Might be good for clustering.

https://electricmatch.com/rocketry

Anyone have experience with them?

 

[Dugway]

I've been holding off until they get approval to sell their AP igniter. Looking forward to both of them.

 

[neil_w]

Price is quite reasonable. I wish they had more tech info than just "requires 6 volts". Also it looks like, with the insulation on the wires, that there's no way standard estes plugs will work with them. I guess you just tape them on?

 

[J Blatz]

Price is quite reasonable. I wish they had more tech info than just "requires 6 volts". Also it looks like, with the insulation on the wires, that there's no way standard estes plugs will work with them. I guess you just tape them on?

I like to wad up an appropriate sized piece of wadding and use it to wedge Q2G2s in place. Should work here as well.

 

[AlfaBrewer]

Maybe short sections of coffee stirrers like what came with the Q2G2s?

 

[terryg]

I would be interested in trying them, but would prefer to get them from an MJG dealer.

 

[Wayco]

I went through checkout, was OK with the $5 service charge, but adding on over $10 to ship 24 lighters was a deal killer.
I'm lighting my BP clusters with Chinese ematches, works great every time.

 

[scsager]

I went through checkout, was OK with the $5 service charge, but adding on over $10 to ship 24 lighters was a deal killer.
I'm lighting my BP clusters with Chinese ematches, works great every time.

I also went through checkout a couple of times to determine the cost per piece delivered.
The smallest order possible - 6 pieces of MJG BP Rocket Starters = $3.20 per starter delivered.
An order of 144 pieces of MJG BP Rocket Starters = $0.75 per starter delivered. That doesn't seem too bad, but 144 x .75 = $108.00

 

[ksaves2]

I went through checkout, was OK with the $5 service charge, but adding on over $10 to ship 24 lighters was a deal killer.
I'm lighting my BP clusters with Chinese ematches, works great every time.

I know "recipes" are a no-no on the open Forum but aren't you augmenting these Chinese e matches? Kurt

 

[Andrew_ASC]

Nope. Jonathan Jennings a SEDS judge had advice of using a pyrodex pellet split lengthwise in four sections epoxied to the fuel grain end. He then ranted how every commercial E match was a piece of garbage via Skype. The Aerotech e matches had a decent amount of pyrogens on them, but the CTI ones had nearly none.

 

[ksaves2]

Lemme say one thing. If one studies a bit about this subject (and there is a lot of legitimate info available online) one can reasonable do-it-themselves safely
albeit with a little exertion. All-in-one kits are out there if one wants to go that route that work pretty well and are cheaper than 2 or 3 bucks a shot after a little
investment. If one expects to hang around in the hobby, naking "lighters" is a nice winter time respite from building. Kurt

 

[rharshberger]

Nope. Jonathan Jennings a SEDS judge had advice of using a pyrodex pellet split lengthwise in four sections epoxied to the fuel grain end. He then ranted how every commercial E match was a piece of garbage via Skype. The Aerotech e matches had a decent amount of pyrogens on them, but the CTI ones had nearly none.

Since CTI 24mm thru 38mm ( and I believe 54mm ) motors have a "starter pellet" they use a regular ematch and dont need much pyrogen on them.

AT motors are entirely dependant on the pyrogen on the igniter for ignition.

Pyrodex pellets are a well known ignition enhancement technique.

 

[ksaves2]

I didn't think AT motor starters were ematch based. I thought they are pyrogen/nichrome wire based. Mr. Jennings who rants that every commercial ematch is junk is welcomed to make his own. I think the commercial blanks are junk and the good ones go to the ematch makers. I've made ematches from absolute
scratch (again I won't discuss details moderator) but it's an absolute PITA. Was fun messing with it when reliable sources were in question and I did get some
impressive results. What I define as impressive with an ematch is a slow burn hot flare as opposed to a "pop". Sometimes a pop would be half the pyrogen on the
back side remained unburned. It probably would have lit a BP charge but I liked the slow, hot flare in some of my homemade jobs.
I don't make 'em anymore, haven't flown a rocket with one of my own but I still pull out one of my homemade jobs and light 'em on the ground with an altimeter
or a 1.5V AAA Nimh battery every now and then. Always work. Kurt

 

[rharshberger]

AT igniters are not ematch based, however an e-match and a AT igniter are both types of bridgewire ignitors . Thickness of the bridgewire and pyrogen composition are the main difference between them.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

Sorry for using ematch term interchangeably. To us the ignitors were all electronically ignited matches with different compounds on the wire. We had CTI, firewires, and AT ignitors. The CTI and firewires appeared similar.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

The FireWires had a red plastic sleeve around a blackened knob and routinely popped for altimeter tests. The AT ignitor has a black pyrogens compound surrounding a yellow insulated wire, and the CTI matches appeared as firewires in different packaging with unknown burn characteristics.
The MJG firewires did not ignite a AT I 1299N or CTI motor when tried.

 

[Wayco]

I also went through checkout a couple of times to determine the cost per piece delivered.
The smallest order possible - 6 pieces of MJG BP Rocket Starters = $3.20 per starter delivered.
An order of 144 pieces of MJG BP Rocket Starters = $0.75 per starter delivered. That doesn't seem too bad, but 144 x .75 = $108.00

Probably have to wait a while for them to make another production run if you order that many.

I know "recipes" are a no-no on the open Forum but aren't you augmenting these Chinese e matches? Kurt

Nope, just tape them to the hole. They fire pretty hot.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

Where's a link to the Chinese Ematches? I want a box.

 

[Wayco]

CJ still sells them here:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/showt...ya-need-these-Reduced-price-increase-quantity

Or you can find them on Ebay, shipped on a slow boat.

 

[blackjack2564]

Yeeuuup....Just tape 'em on nozzle & your good to go.

So far they have worked flawless on cluster up to 9 motors.

D motor [and E's] on left C-6 on right, they fit in nozzle on those. On smaller nozzle B motor, just tape over hole, sparks will fly up into it.








Just start with single motor flights, till you figure it out.

11 in. leads make clustering a snap.

 

[Wayco]

Yeeuuup....Just tape 'em on nozzle & your good to go.

Yeeuuup, I'm feeding my Viper 3 a steady diet of E12-8's now. I'm amazed it survived it's first three flights before you turned me on to that idea.

Must have burned a thousand of those orange lighters since you started that thread.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

I just want to get some L-1 electronic deployment charges and flights down before moving onto L-2. I'd like to play with electronic deploy after l-1 cert. These are cheaper to ground test with also than FireWires and the SEDS team next year is oddly very fascinated about dual deploy for redundancy outside of the SEDS goals. They wanna go for TRA record like we attempted, but I think they can make it with some more tweaks and a waiver year round.

We went through a box of fifty firewires on one multistage scratch bird with all the ground tests. Lighters are cheap prototype rockets are real money and effort. 11" sounds plenty on sustainer wiring too.

 

[Andrew_ASC]

The one FireWire that didn't light is the one that scared us.

 

[blackjack2564]

Andrew [or anyone]....if you wish to increase your odds of success to 99.975%, simply use 2 matches per charge rather than 1. Especially in small diam. rockets, where there is only space for 1 altimeter.
When I have an Xtreme flight I use 2 for each event [charge] in both altimeters, 4 total for each event=100% reliability. Takes the "worry" out.

View attachment 333412



It takes no more space in your bay. Just a bit of tape one metal head to keep from short.

 

[Crazyrocket]

Jim, do you wire in parallel or series? I know this is a long standing debate, but was wondering your experience and on which altimeters. Thanks!

 

[blackjack2564]

I only use 2 per charge and always in parallel. Not sure, but I think the debate is on going, over how to do large clusters.

I just run 2 though same hole in bulk plate, so my BP's don't look like swiss cheese....lol Then once inside bay, twist stripped ends together in pairs, cut them to 1/4in & insert in terminal block. If ya got terminal block on outside of BP's..even simpler.

Over the years on these: Strato's all types...MAWD HiAlt-45 CF....R-Das....Raven...Adept-22... Telemega...All Missleworks.
Using standard 9v or LiPo's [single cell 3.7 & 2cell 7.4]

Years ago I flew an L-3 size rocket & the "perfect storm" happened. R-das & Mawd. Apogee went fine...main was disaster. R-das channel didn't work and Mawd back up had a bad match! Redundancy down the toilet.
Had I used 2 matches per channel as I do now, it would have saved the day