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  #11  
Old 09-06-2022, 01:46 PM
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LeeR LeeR is offline
Retired with Way Too Many Kits
 
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As mentioned, storage is a crucial factor. I have lived in my present house 39 years. (That’s not very common anymore, and being retired, we sure don’t need more space … but I digress).
Anyway, I have motors that have always been stored in our basement. Cool, and dry. In January 2020, I flew a 2-stage using a 50-year old B14-0 booster with date code December 1969!), staging to a 1991 dated B6-6. Perfect flight. So that B14-0 spent about 14 years in other storage locations. My memory is hazy about where I got them. I moved around a lot in the 70s, and did not launch rockets very often, but all my pre-1983 motors have not lived in temperature controlled storage.
I have more B14 motors and plan to use them, so maybe that 2020 launch success was pure luck. At least 95% of my inventory has always been in my basement.

My only motor problems have been with Q-Jet B6 motors. I bought a few packs of As and Bs when first released, and two have worked, two have failed. These were the motors that needed labels peeled to fit motor tubes. I have heard speculation that they were might have been overpressed during assembly. This could cause issues certainly, and might explain their increased diameter and requirement to peel labels to make them fit 18mm motor tubes.
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Last edited by LeeR : 09-06-2022 at 06:38 PM.
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  #12  
Old 09-06-2022, 07:51 PM
shockwaveriderz shockwaveriderz is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gdjsky01
I have no idea. I'll try an 18mm B3-3 in a 'who cares' rocket. I have a bunch of them
Others tell me the B3-3 is gonna go BOOM. Hence the don't care rocket.
I remember 13mm Centuri motors. But I never knew about AVI.

I don't think I see date code before the early 70's so I doubt they are 'collectable'

I think I am indeed confused about the high initial thrust motors.
I 'get' the B14 (I am a child of the 60s/70s). The three stage farside-x and what?


go for it Chas. Record it for prosperity
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  #13  
Old 09-06-2022, 11:44 PM
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georgegassaway georgegassaway is offline
Contest, Sport, it's all good......
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tdracer
Any idea how those motors have been stored?
When I became a BAR around 2001, I had a large collection of early 1970 vintage Estes motors. But they'd not been well stored - basically left in an unheated garage for most of the previous 30 years with lots of temperature and freeze/thaw cycles..
I flew a few of them as a BAR, but the failure rate was horrid - about 50% CATO rate (with more than one case rupture). I simply couldn't accept that sort of failure rate and ended up disposing of the rest.



Big chance it was HUMIDITY from being stored in the garage for all that time. I know of a couple of examples where people had kept engines in damp basements for years, where nearly every engine fired had a cato. But the engines had not undergone temperature extremes.

As for 18mm MPC B3-3's, most of my early models were MPC (K-Mart way closer than a hobby shop at the time), and I used B3-3's in a number of MPC models, like the Moon Go. Flew fine, as those models were not all that heavy (largest diamter was 30mm).

Then, later, there were the MPC B3-3m's, the 13mm mini-motors 2.25" long. I used those for a lot of B powered contest gliders.
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  #14  
Old 09-07-2022, 03:41 PM
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ghrocketman ghrocketman is offline
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I flew an MPC B3-3m in an Estes Dragonfly ONCE.
Glided a LONG time.
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