vintage FSI motors
 

I was looking through some of the early catalogs on ninfinger tonight while watchign the Yankees choke, and found the following interesting

http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/rock...67/67fsi12.html

from the 1967 FSI catalog.

of note ( other than the F engines being freight only, ala Coasters,etc ) is a few little details I picked up on .

1) if you note the B engines, it;s actually a ' C' according to the impulse numbers of 5.36 NS.

also note the C is a mid-C at only 7.81. ( and a D.915 at 10.02, really a 'hot C '... is this the forunner of the D18 ? ) .

2) of much interest is the F1.3 listed as having a 10 second burn time, not the 9 of the F7 steam machine, same motor ? or redesigned / loss of burn time for a larger initial spike ?

3) this is the one that really got me thinking / impressed me - note the propellent wieghts on these motors, and you realize that the ISP on the E and down engines is over 100, much higher than most BP engines, and actually higher than the 'bragged on' AVI Gold series 90 ISP, interesting indeed.

now where are these great motors when we need em :-(

~ AL

only has a couple FSI motors left, coming soon to a NAR launch near you :)

The answer to that lies 2 pages later http://www.ninfinger.org/~sven/rock...67/67fsi16.html
This is when the NAR coding system went metric and B in the old system went to 1.2 lb-s - they show B in the "new system" as 6n-s don't know where they got that from, but it's a result of the change from english to metric

The old F1.3 was the forerunner of the F7 and the F18 became the mis-labeled F100

Dale Greene
SPAAR 503

The old FSI engines were very optimistically rated for total n-sec from the entire life of their engines.
The old F100 actually tested out (when they and the E60 did not CATO) usually as a 100% E80 or 1% F80.
Most of their engines were nowhere near the actual advertised n-sec. I doubt the actual ISP was anywhere near 100 (especially if you were using their advertised numbers).
The old F7 was the closest to the actual advertised specs....it at least tested out as an F.

More likely the forerunner of the D4, one of the dwarf Ds the FSI made. (The other was the D6.)

The A-C and D4 and D6 were 21mm x 70 mm; the E5, D18, and later the D20 were 21mm x 95mm or so.

OOP Motor Testing
 

I'm one of those Ted Cochran has given the green light to flight test several FSI OOP motors
for the latest NAR experiment. On December 23, 2006 I'll be test flying a F7-6 and (should
the model return ok) an E60-4; both flight attempts will be made using the FSI OSO kit. I'll
also be flight testing several Centuri labeled B14-5's that day...

The F100s Trip Barber tested in '72-73 came out to 38.2 ns, and only 48 newtons avg thrust. A max thrust of 93.7. The F7s were 38.7ns and 5.4 avg. The E5s, get this, were only 11.3ns!! and 2.3n avg.
Lower than the Cox D8 which was 11.9ns and 7 newtons avg.

The old FSI motors sure were short on performance AND reliability....the only thing they were long on was a whole lotta CARDBOARD.
It's a shame that these junkers actually outlasted the earlier much higher performing Enerjet E24, F52, and F67 motors. Those were REAL E and F motors that performed as advertised !

What's your take on the Composite Dynamics ProJet E and F motors? I still have quite a few
unused composite motors, too (production date is September 1982).

I always liked 'em. I had an old Estes Saturn V that I put Centuri wraps on, took off the SM/LM shroud and added the tubes and nose for a Maxi Alpha III, added big trapesoid fins and painted it solid yellow. Called it the Mighty Favog (bonus points if you know the reference). Flew it four or five times on F45s. On the last flight it caught some wind during the really slow liftoff and it headed toward Married Housing on the University of GA campus (we flew from the intramural fields) and various and sundry munchkins made away with it. Usually we only lost small rockets that way. Big rockets were usually confiscated by the kids' parental unit and we would do a door-to-door search to get them back. Unfortunately some parent must've liked the idea of having a five foot tall yellow rocket in their tiny Married Housing apartment cause I didn't get it back.


I've got a E20-10 and a F45-8 in front of me (dated 3-80). I have two or three others in the stash.

I have a little story to tell here. A long time ago I was a salesman for Sears (thank god that's over) One of the duties a salesman has is changing the tape on the cash register when it runs out - there were two types, 2.75" and 3.75" The first time I changed one I looked at the paper core I had removed and was convinced it was a FSI motor casing! I took it home dug out an old FSI motor - and the tubes were identical, convolutely wound same length, ID and OD, same color kraft paper. I always wondered why they stayed with the oddball size, I guess it was because the could buy an off the shelf tube cheaper than getting an 18mm made special order.

Dale Greene
SPAAR 503