Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post - Delay charges: new vs. old

You did not provide production years for the "modern" motors. Here is what I observed. Estes motors lost almost all tracking smoke during the delay sometime in the 1980's or early 1990's. I do not remember exactly when, but it became VERY obvious when Quest motors appeared. (It was also around the time that Estes motors went to "Poopy Clay".) The Quest motors (both the USA and the German made) have a TON of smoke throughout the delay burn. I commented about this on r.m.r. extensively. Comments about the Estes motor lack of smoke and extremely short delay times ( a -5 would give you 2 seconds of delay and a -2 would give you .5 seconds of delay) compared to the Quest extremely accurate delays (after they moved production to Germany) and massive smoke.

Well, Estes changed their motors. They fixed the "Poopy Clay" problem and the clay is stronger than it's ever been. They also added a lot of smoke to the delay and they became more accurate. Most of the smoke starts up midway to near the end of the delay, but it's better than no smoke at all - and it's pretty ****ed visible.

SO, check out extremely recent Estes production motors (from the last 2 or 3 years). Anything from year code C or ealier is not going to be good. A key hint in how old your Estes motors are is that you included a C5-3 motor. They have not manufactured those in years.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghrocketman

This weekend I had the opportunity to launch several rockets in my backyard and decided to use some of my old "collectable/ no-longer-certified" engines, as well as some new Estes production.
Old engines used:
2 Estes 1/4 A3-4T (1974 production)
2 Estes 1/2 A3-4T (1976 production)
1 Estes A5-4 (1971 production)
1 Centuri A5-4 (1967 production)
2 Estes B6-4 (1977 production)
1 Estes A8-3 (1977 production)
1 Centuri B14-7 (1972 production)
1 Estes B14-5 (1976 production)
1 Estes B4-6 (production unknown, but OLD)
1 Cox 18mm D8-3 (1971 production; in my Mars Lander)

1 Estes D11-9 (early 80's production)
1 FSI D18-6 (1975 production)

New engines used:
2 Estes A8-3
3 Estes B6-4
1 Estes C6-7
1 Estes C5-3 (In my Mars Lander ! )

1 Estes B6-0

All engines except the FSI D18-6 performed as designed....fired perfectly !
The FSI D18 resulted in the expected kaboom CATO....luckily it was expected and in a rocket that was borderline worthless.

One thing that I noted was that I would guess all the old/decertified/collectible engines except the D11-9 produced about 10 TIMES the tracking delay smoke as the modern ones.
The old engines (after firing) had a much more prominent "sulfury" smell to them also.
I had not launched any of my old engines in a LONG time and decided to check out this "lack of delay smoke" discussion that I have seen several times on discussion boards.
Anybody know what the deal is with this ?
I suspect it is a reduction in sulfur content in the delay element but I'm not sure....I hope it is not the result of some sort of manufacturer cave-in toward the mamby-pamby environmentalists.