When Was YOUR First CATO?

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And you can come to upstate NY and fly with all 12 of us. :D Or else with Scrapdaddy. :rolleyes: (If you go with him, there will then be one of you at the field who actually flies rockets. ;) )

MarkII
 
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The photos of catos that are on the web are there precisely because those motor failures were spectacular. Not all of them are as visually dramatic as those. I have seen photos and web videos of catos that appear to an onlooker to be nothing more than a muted "pop." And I have read accounts of motor catos that hardly did any damage to the rocket. From what I hear, many (perhaps most) catos aren't caused by casing failures; a great many are caused by end closure failures or nozzle failures. A nozzle failure may not cause any damage to the rocket at all.

MarkII

The intent for the clay nozzle is for it to fail first and act as a safety valve for black powder motors (it has worked pretty well with the E9),

Same with the threads for the reloadables... I.e. the threads should fail before the pressure gets great enough to blow a hole out the side of the casing. Don't know about the failure mode of the snap rings used in some reloadables.
 
I haven't had a cato...yet.


I'm expecting one soon. I flinch every time the countdown gets to one.

so far it has paid off.

I pray my luck doesn't end on my dad's level 1 in my 29/240 case.

blowing up my rocket is bad, but blowing up my dad's would be horrible!


Mark, you are welcome to come to Idaho and fly with all 20 of us. I haven't seen any CATO's out here, but i've only been to a couple launches.

Blowing up someone elses rocket is better.. you only feel bad when it happens.. of course your dad would not let you live it down ever LOL

Where is the launch in Idaho? got a link to your club? I am somewhat close to a couple parts of Idaho. maybe a road trip is in the future!

The NY launch is WAY to far away.. although thanks for the invite!
 
I think the first time I had a motor fail was at the 2007 Florida Winternationals. We were launching our Akavish on an Aerotech G38 motor.

3 .. 2 .. 1 .. BOOM

2007-01-27+Winternationals+Launch+388.jpg

The rocket was designed for rear-ejection. There was a 1/4" plywood bulkhead above the motor mount. It's that plywood disk you can see flying at the top of the photo.

Here's what the motor looked like afterwards:

2007-01-27+Winternationals+Launch+335.jpg

We rebuilt the rocket onsite and it flew fine the next time.

-- Roger
 

IMHO, if you're gonna have to suffer a failure then it's a least some consolation when you get a great photograph from it!

My last motor failure was very spectacular. I had six cameras recording it, four of them in or on the rocket. At least I got a nice video of a $400 camera being roasted from the camera's point of view ......

-- Roger
 
I've had two CATOs.

The first one was from an estes A10; in a plastic estes rocket that I forgot the name of. The motor exploded instantly, split the rocket clean in half, then shot the still burning delay charge ten feet into the air. If I remember right, the fireball from the charge was about the size of a baseball.

The second one came last year with a G64. The casing made it almost impossible to put a liner in, so the motor was built wrong. The CATO wasn't very spectacular; the aft closure got shot off the motor right after it lit. The rocket coasted up to about twenty feet and just floated back down. The only damage was a popped fin and a scorched rear end.
 
Last summer was my first (and only) so far actually. The only casualties were an AT 38/480 casing and aft closure, as well as a 2.1" nosecone and some tubing (the fin can, oddly enough, was fine).
 
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I have felt like this on some days.


IMG_0877.jpg




Usually after a night of this....


LDRS26_7-16-07_RAL_CATO-MarkHaye-5.jpg


MarkII
 
had one and seen another.

Estes Red Alert on a 1/2 A something, got it for my birthday or Christmas in about '95 or so built it and wanted to go flying, there was snow on the ground and it was near dusk, real flamy contrail and lost it. I don't remember it being that high and we scoured the school yard for weeks afterwards never found anything. Now that I know better it was probably temp cycling of the motors.

I saw a Estes broad sword get turned into a volcano about 2 years ago when the charge went off on ignition, I think the guy was flying on an estes D or E.

Don't recall any high power failures that I witnessed at least one no light second stages and some shreds that were a little close for comfort though.
 
And you can come to upstate NY and fly with all 12 of us. :D Or else with Scrapdaddy. :rolleyes: (If you go with him, there will then be one of you at the field who actually flies rockets. ;) )

MarkII

Actually markII you'd actally be correct I think I want to koon astre somtime in the summer, people have convinsed me it's educational;)
 
I've been lucky and not had one myself. I wish I could have had one myself rather that what actually did happen.

A kid at one of our launches built a nice scratch rocket. He wanted to buy and AT 18mm D21-7 from me. I sold it to him and he set it up right. It blew up his rocket.:eek:

He never came back.:confused2:
 
First CATO: Estes B8-5 whose propellant detached itself from the casing, went straight out of the top of the rocket like a Roman candle, but did no harm.

Most spectacular CATO, unfortunately without photo: Quest C6-3 which went BANG, scorched the fins but failed to do serious harm to the rocket. Mainly because the rocket's body was a sweetie container with thicker walls than the normal rocket body tube, also fairly wide diameter, so there wasn't as much pressure as there would have been inside, say, a BT-50, and the thick wall contained it. Someone else's rocket with another Quest motor was not so lucky and the CATO blew a hole in the side of the body tube.

Most recent CATO: Estes B6-4 which simultaneously blew the nozzle out of the back and the nose out of the front.

704f25_cato_klein.jpg
 
My first real CATO was an Estes Gauchito with an A10-3T in it that spit the nozzle. Heard a nice loud "PING" then watched it burn through the blast plate, and then the rocket itself.

Most spectacular was my first reload. An F40-4 in a Mercury Grave Danger. it went up about 100 feet, and then it turned into flaming death. Blew the front seal. Hospital_Rocket was there and was laughing with me. Flames shooting out everywhere. Fortunately, there was snow on the ground.
 
Flying since sometime in 1965, my first Cato wasn't until Dec 1971 a D13-7. I've heard lots of people talking about the D13 problem but I flew a lot of them and only had that one CATO.
In April 72 had another with a C6-3.
After that want nearly 20year and thousands of year round flights without another until a Feb. 1992 during an extremely cold winter day odd-roc flight with a D12-3 CATO.
Then the last in Jan of 09 a C6-0.

I'm sure you'll note that the majority of these occured during "colder weather" launches. This concures with the test data collected over the years showing that (at least for BP motors), launching motors in temperatures greater then 75°f colder then the greatest temperature a given motor has been exposed to greatly increases the chance of having that motor cato.

SST Shuttle-b3b-sm_2 pic & C6-3 Cato_04-23-72.jpg

454b-Lp10-sm_4.5in SpoolDAZ just before C6-3 Cato_01-18-09.JPG
 
In 10 years of flying I've seen several catos, but never experienced one myself.
 
Just like the term "knob" was never before, nor was it ever intended to be associated with "effects or colored rocket motors"...

Until the definition was changed through usage. Seems like language has evolved. :cyclops:

Like it or not, that CATO genie is out of the bottle. :eek:
 
Just like the term "knob" was never before, nor was it ever intended to be associated with "effects or colored rocket motors"...

Until the definition was changed through usage. Seems like language has evolved. :cyclops:

Like it or not, that CATO genie is out of the bottle. :eek:


I absolutely undestand that the usage of the incorrect form of the abbreviation is widespread. I also see no reason to refrain from providing accurate information regarding the term and the origin of the incorrect false acronym.

A similar thing is going on here at work. "FOD" is an acronym form of "Foreign Object Damage". The acronym has been in use for years and years. There were/are "Prevent FOD" campaigns. That makes sense - we want to prevent the damage casued by foreign objects.

Well, just like cato, people heard the term spoken and never got a full explanation of what it 'stood for'. So, they started calling the foreign objects "FOD" and assumed they were supposed to prevent the objects (or clean the area) when they were told to "prevent FOD". They then made up words to fit the acronym and started referring to the foreign objects as "Foreign Object Debris".

After an incident here recently, the USAF had everyone go through very serious re-training and magically everyone startedusing the correct terminology again (for now...). They now refer to the objects as "FO" and the damage (or potential damage) caused by them as "FOD".

I'm sure the facts will not stop Moe from parking his car in the "Car Hole".

And how about the widespread use of the term "burn-out" that I observed in the 1970's and even in Star Wars? This came from folks who confused "misfire", which is an igniter failure, with the term for the end of propellant burn ("burn-out"). Shall we accept and embrace that amazingly bad usage of a technical term?

https://www.jedisaber.com/SW/Sounds/STW41.wav

I'm thinking of a Chris Rock quote right now.....
 
When the communication refers to something technical and important like FOs and the D they can inflict, sure. Getting things straight is fine and effort and attention being focused on the proper terminology is a good thing.

However, for things like "Car Hole" and CATO which are mildly entertaining and not really integral to the "Future of Rocketry as We Know It" a little "chill-out" is warranted.

We can keep posting the "correct information" at every opportunity, but I don't foresee a grass-roots effort to go back through the 40 years of rocketry and correct all the language and terminology that may have become skewed or used for other-than-original purposes or even the "silly" stuff which has been made up in that time.

The origin and etymology of cato/CATO/Kato Kalin is academic at best. By all means keep posting the information, but things will be as they are. ;)

I didn't know Chris Rock did rocketry! Sweet!
 
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Fred, please, enough. You've been beating that dead horse for years.

Ok, who had Post#37? Calling for #37, you're our winner for this month's CATO-BINGO. Please see Fred for your prize. ;)

Everyone else, better luck next month.

:roll::duck::roll:
 
Ok, who had Post#37? Calling for #37, you're our winner for this month's CATO-BINGO. Please see Fred for your prize. ;)

Everyone else, better luck next month.

:roll::duck::roll:

OK, we should seriously have a bingo pool like that. When will the "Pet Peeve Post" appear?

:roll: :D
 
Okay, here's my first CATO, it's the boilerplate model for our Metropolitaln Police Call Box.

IMG_0878.jpg


And here's the motor, a single use E30

IMG_0877.jpg

Wow, what a coincidence, my freind has an E30 CATO in the same model. It appeared that the Q2G2 igniter burst the plastic case, and did not light any propellant. This happened at a Cub Scout Demo launch. My 1st CATO occured at the same launch; an E9 exploded in my Big Birdie. We had another E9 blow the nozzle that day. Three CATOs at one demo launch kinda makes us look bad, but the kids loved it.
 
First CATO: Estes B8-5 whose propellant detached itself from the casing, went straight out of the top of the rocket like a Roman candle, but did no harm.

Most spectacular CATO, unfortunately without photo: Quest C6-3 which went BANG, scorched the fins but failed to do serious harm to the rocket. Mainly because the rocket's body was a sweetie container with thicker walls than the normal rocket body tube, also fairly wide diameter, so there wasn't as much pressure as there would have been inside, say, a BT-50, and the thick wall contained it. Someone else's rocket with another Quest motor was not so lucky and the CATO blew a hole in the side of the body tube.

Most recent CATO: Estes B6-4 which simultaneously blew the nozzle out of the back and the nose out of the front.

That is one of the strangest looking Catos's iv seen :confused:
 
Never had one myself thank goodness, but have seen a few spectacular ones at NERRF over the years.

Glenn
 
Cato's Are Becoming Rarer and rarer, that why my motto is to always bring the camera:D
 
Ok, who had Post#37? Calling for #37, you're our winner for this month's CATO-BINGO. Please see Fred for your prize. ;)

Everyone else, better luck next month.

:roll::duck::roll:

I WON! I WON! I WON!

Wait.... do they have the t-shirts in 5XL and a couple for my niece in a girls medium? :D


Ok, the actual definition of CATO is...

Connecticut
Area
Tripoli
Organization

Established 1998. NAR Section # 581 TRA # 27
https://www.catorockets.org/
 
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