I actually flew a BUNCH of new-old-stock D13-0's and D13-5's from the late 70's through the mid 90's and never had one go 'Kaboom', but may others did in the early days. Possibly aging in a consistent environment made mine ok.
I never had any catos with the notorious 24mm E15's from Estes in the 90's during their first foray into motors larger than D's either. |
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Funny how that works for different people buying in different parts of the country. Lots of folks had CATO problems with the FSI F100, E60, and F7 motors. My first batch of E60's were fine, and I never had any CATO's with either the F100 or F7, but the second batch of E60's I had CATO 2 out of 3. I never got any D13's to play with back in the day. Being a freshman in high school and totally broke, I could not afford them. I was out of the hobby when the E15's came out. |
D-13's
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How many do you need?
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You mentioned the D13 engines were subject of a recall.
I read and kept most all correspondence from rocket manufacturers. I don't remember any recall notice sent from Estes. Maybe the recall only reached the hobby stores. Right after they became available, my first D13 was in a Goblin. Ignited, went up five feet and blew a fireball out the top. The inside tube was sooty but no other damage to the rocket. I never tried the other two engines. They are stored with some other old engines, still in the mailing tube. |
Although I never had any issues with the Estes D13 or E15, I had PLENTY with the FSI F100 and especially the E60.
With the F100 I had maybe a 25% cato rate, and with the E60 I had a ridiculous cato rate of over 50% no matter where in the core I inserted the igniter. It amazes me those turds were never de-certed. |
Back in the early 80's when I was still doing contests, I went to one held at the Johnson Space Center. One of the events was E eggloft altitude and almost all of us were using E60's. I don't remember any CATOS that day, but I did lose mine to a high level wind that carried it off to the east. The wife and I got into the car and she drove while I hung out the window trying to keep it in sight. We drove for 3-4 miles and came to dead end street where I lost sight of it while it was still fairly high, probably 400-500 ft. **** thing probably ended up in someone's backyard pool in Clearwater....
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When I got into model rocketry in 1973, D13s were long gone, in favor of the D12.. I do recall there were a good number of CATO D12s experienced by our club members in Colorado Springs. Almost all of these involved a split in the casing that would cause side-blow, pretty much roaching the whole model.
Have a couple of photos.... The first is a D12-0 that side-blew in a booster stage. 2nd photo is a D12 'Fireball' caught in the act of destroying a super-roc entry at NARWIN-1 in Phoenix. Original photo courtesy of Herb Desind. |
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No, they weren't 'recalled'. They were just silently replaced with the D12. the D13's came out in 1969. We never had problems with them until '71. But boy, when they started popping, they were popping all over the place! In my 'Rocket Film' on YouTube account royatlvideo, after the NARAM 13 section, there's a launch of a large silver and white two-stage rocket were BOTH stages went kaboom. |
Wonder if they went through some sort of unplanned abnormal heat-cycling on the '71 batches or some problem with the 24mm casings using substandard glue in that batch of casings ?
I just checked my remaining stash of D13's and they all have '69 and early '70 date codes. Based on the info from Roy above, this probably explains why I never had any "KABOOMs" with the D13. |
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