Spark Plug E-Match

[ksaves2]

I have ones with yellow wires and ones with orange wires with a few left of the original Davey ematches before they became unobtanium. (For a time.)

There was a time when ematches were an absolute beech to acquire and I laid a in a supply and wished I had ordered more before they were restricted. Eventually an edict came down one had to have an LEUP to get them which made it a royal PITA. Thank heavens I knew a fellow who had an LEUP and was a supply line for local fliers. Ummmm rocket fliers who acquired the appropriate certifications, were in a club and flew at an appropriately FAA waivered launchsite aren't known to be a nefarious bunch. Wild and crazy but certainly NOT nefarious!

Thank heavens things relaxed so fliers could buy them again. That was the impetus for me to learn to make my own ematches in the past "just in case" but as I've said is a royal PITA to do and the commercial ones whether orange, yellow wired, MFJ or Daveyfire work fine.

Kurt Savegnago

 

[Bat-mite]

Ooooooooh look at that. These are the ones I currently have, are they considered any good?

I've never had a problem with them, but some people complain about them a lot. Always continuity test before installing.

 

[Buckeye]

Ooooooooh look at that. These are the ones I currently have, are they considered any good?

Yes, of course. If you are worried about reliability, use two of them in series (counterintuitive, but actually the best way) or parallel. At $0.36 each, no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[Brian H.]

At $0.36 each, no need to reinvent the wheel.

On a personal note, I like to promote reinvention of the wheel. Without that, we would still be driving horse/buggy vehicles.

 

[AllDigital]

I use a lot of the "orange e-matches" from eBay, but only for ground igniters and not for my altimeter pyros. They come in all lengths (I have some 3 meters long) and I can't recall ever having one fail to ignite.

That said, in my testing the orange matches all seem to have the same profile. They draw about 2.5 amps of power and they lose continuity when they fire, but then (oddly) they regain continuity as they cool down (most of the time). We build our own flight computers and ignition boxes, so we've tested a lot of different match and igniter profiles. For my altimeter pyros I still use MJG matches, because they seem to consistently fire under .5 amps and don't regain continuity on cool down.

Whatever you use with your altimeters, just make sure you ground test them over and over to make sure the battery and electronics all work well together.

 

[Brian H.]

Wow! That looks exactly like the solution I was looking for, guess now is a waiting game.

Looks like they are available in limited quantities:

https://www.arcignitiontech.com/items