Motor Static Fires

[DPatell]

I've been static firing a lot of motors lately, so I figured I'd post some of my progress here.

Here is a 38-220 blue propellent, with quite a bit of aluminum to create smoke. Didn't turn out too bad, I will have to use this formula for bigger motors

 

[DPatell]

This is a 38-900 yellow flame motor. It burned very fast with an impressive flame. It spit a good amount of casting tube, causing some burps at the end of the burn. It worked out to about a 900ns J466.

 

[DPatell]

This motor was the big test. My first attempt at making a 54mm casing, as well as the first 54mm load I had mixed. A normal blue formula, this worked out to an 800ns J394. I like the flame.

 

[DPatell]

Today my dad, brother, grandma and I went out for some Thanksgiving static fires. First up was a 38-220 smokey load. This uses a lot of zinc to make the dense black smoke. It burned surprisingly fast, with a 1.25 second burn. Works out to a 200 ns H160.

 

[DPatell]

The second test fire was a 54-800 White Lightning clone. Very impressive burn. In the picture, the smoke came right at the camera, so it's messed up a little. This motor burned for 2.15 seconds, making it an 800ns J372. Very close to real WL.

 

[Stones]

Man, that looks like fun. Only wish I lived in an area to do that. Scratch building motors... that'd be right up my alley.

 

[Karl]

Me too, looks like you had very successful static fires!
Karl

 

[Donaldsrockets]

I love that smokey motor, that's really awesome. Talk about smokin' up the joint.

 

[Johnnie]

Wow, great work Dan. Love that fast Blue flame myself. Nice flame on the black smokey propellant too.

I too will be testing some motors with a group of ER's on Dec 5th, I hope it is as much of a success as yours was.

 

[rstaff3]

Nice motors, thanks for sharing them!

 

[midpwrguy]

And to think it's been only a few months and your making motors
like that! What sort of case pressure are you running on them motors Dan. Here's a picture of a little 24mm at work. It had
1100psi on the case.

 

[gerbs4me]

nice static test
love the smokey motor

 

[cdma77]

Originally posted by DPatell
The second test fire was a 54-800 White Lightning clone. Very impressive burn. In the picture, the smoke came right at the camera, so it's messed up a little. This motor burned for 2.15 seconds, making it an 800ns J372. Very close to real WL.

Dan,

Did you get your measurements from a load cell and pressure transducer ?

Jeff

 

[DPatell]

I make my casings very similar to Loki dimensions. I then assume the max Ns of the case, but since my propellent is unimodal and other things, I estimate a little below the total Ns of an equivalent Loki case.

I don't use a transducer or load cell at all. I just use my digital camera to get the burn time in order to get average Ns. Nothing spectacular, if the motor works then I'm happy!

If anyone else has pictures from static fires, please post them here! I am interested to see what other people are up to.

 

[DPatell]

I static fired another 38-660 today, but this time purple. It burned for 2.07 seconds, making it a J314.

This is the pic of it coming up to pressure, the sparks are the magnesium from the ignitor. Very cool pic!!!

 

[DPatell]

Here it is mid-burn. The camera washed out much of the color, but it was a very purple, transparent flame with countless mach diamonds. Very loud, as well.

 

[MattEx]

Wow...

That coming up to pressure photo is awesome .

Pity the mach diamonds aren't visible... i've found that to help capture them, turning the exposure speed up the digicam/normalcam seems to help. Turning the focus to "landscape" mode seems to help too.

Nice purple, btw .

 

[edwardw]

I know when I try to get the exhaust plume I set the camera to manual focus and put it on a tripod. That way it won't try to compensate/autofocus when the motor fires. Also - I turn down the f-stop/exposure so that it is dark and has a slightly longer exposure time. Also, on some new cameras the fireworks mode really does a nice job.

Edward

 

[MattEx]

Hi all,
Thought I might post this picture of a static firing of my new propellant "Standard". I finally got my video-capture eqipment working (video taken on old film video camera) so I was able to do analysis and get pictures out of it.

It was a H150, 300 Ns. Exactly 2 second burntime.

I'll be flying it soon .