SEARS Research Launch Report for Oct 21st 2007
Sunday, October 21st, 2007The first SEARS Tripoli research launch was held on the afternoon of Oct 21st 2007 at Samson, AL. Kendall Brent did a static burn of a sugar motor and launched several rockets with sugar motors. See Kendall’s report below for the details. We also had some commercial motor launches. Chris Short brought a friend Halley from Auburn. Chris and Halley are members of this years Student Launch Initiative. John Hansel, Greg Lane and Chris Crews also attended. All flights were successful except for one CATO. The pictures are available here and the videos are here.
Click thru the slideshow below of the static burn of a sugar motor in a three inch PVC casing.
Thanks to Chris for setting up the research launch and Kendall for showing us his motors.
Greg
I came with 5 research motors, 4 to fly and one for a hole in the ground static test. There were 3 KNSO sugar motors. Two of these were singal use PVC with remachines aerotech nozzels. Big sugar is a 3 inch PVC motor useing a 54mm aerotech nozzel bored out to 9/16. The singel fuel grain was cast as a 1/2 by 1 1/2 C slot in a 9 inch 3 inch coupler. The total grain weighed 2.75 pounds. This motor was static tested and burned as expected. The other PVC motor was made from 1.25 PVC useing a remachine 29 mm aerotech nozzel bored out to .25 inch. The singel fuel grain was a C slot cast in a 5 inch 38mm liner tube with a .125 by .75 slot. This motor power a flight with a PerfectFlite timer for recovery. The other Sugar motor was a 3 Bates grain in 54mm Loki case. This motor suffered a CATO soon after ingition(see video) . Cause of CATO is expected to be either inhibitor failure or cracking of the grains at ignition. A 4 grain 38mm CPAP (Tiger Tales) was used to take my Firestorm 54 to 2900 ft. The final motor was a research Hybrid which failed to fill. The cause of the failure turned out to be a defective Press to connect fitting in the motor.
