D13 Estes Motors
 

How many of you are familiar with D-13 motors?
They were out around the early 70's, but the biggest difference was the nozzle size, smaller, causing them to fail.

From what I am told, they were referred to as the "Kaboom" motors.

I did find a couple in my motor lot, very interesting.....

Bad doctor.:p


The delay time is after the "dash". They were D13 motors, not D-13 motors. (Need I bring up the Citation motor designations?)

They were great when they did not fail. They had a deeper core than the D12 and they had a higher peak thrust, with coresponding higher internal pressure.

I'm not sure if they made any casing modifications, such as requiring more glue, but I do know they created the D12 to improve reliability. Lower peak thrust, lower pressure.

There were still problems with the D12 but they were not as bad as the D13. The D13 failures were often split casings accompanied by propellant blow-through. The D12 failures were almost always propellant blow-through.

They have indeed tweaked something over the years because the D12 very rarely fails these days compared to the 1970's.

As always, proper storage can also affect failure rates.

I have one sealed tube of D13s and one lose D13. Also have a couple brochures about the D13... also have a few kits that recommend the D13 as a motor... other than that I know nothing! :)

Robert

Of course, you should clarify that you are talking about Estes D13 motors, as Aerotech produces a D13 reload for its 18mm casing.

I still have one left, a D13-0 in an old style Estes-stripe casing (I *think* all the D12 motors were produced with the logo-style casing).

Shread is correct about the general failure modes of it. It seemed to be similar to the later E15 episode. If you flew a really fresh one, it would work very well. But store it for a few months and they'd often cato.

I have a film of an old MASER launch in '71. A friend of mine built a large two-stage model from peeled out carpet tube (just barely under the one pound limit). I had the good sense of setting the movie camera for 24fps (slow motion for 8mm) and the movie shows the obliteration of *both* stages with lots of smoke!

I remember the D13's very, very well. One exploded on my K-36 Saturn - V at a Regional
meet in Louisiana (in 1972, I think) just as the model was starting to move up the rod; cost
me all of my flight points :mad: . I was in no mood to try a second flight after that. I still have the "last" D13-3 from that batch in my OOP vintage motor collection....

I flew two D13-5's last year as part of the NAR old motor testing program. The date code indicated they were made in 1969.

I flew them in a Goblin clone and they both performed perfectly. Liftoff was much faster than the same model using a D12.

Nozzle size is much bigger than a D12. I still have one more and a couple of D13-3's that I want to fly before the end of year.

I never had one CATO but will admit that I never flew a lot of them.

Fred,

I've noticed your posts and attachments make a huge deal about brush fires. Is that a huge problem out in Cali? (I'm particularly thinking of the one you posted a couple weeks ago telling people they had to RUN to their rocket with a bucket of water if it crashed...)

I only ask because I launched a lot of rockets in my youth, and had a number of them fail/crash in spectaular ways, but have not once even come close to starting a fire, even a small one... The places we'd launch would be typically an athletic complex or groomed park, but there were often farm fields off to one side where the rockets would sometimes crash into...

Just wondering...

-Tim

Fred

I know, I just wanted to emphasize the "13"

Caught me by surprise when I came across a couple.
There was a post about "fires", I would say, if it didn't rain in a long time, many parts of the country, then, under the right conditions, I would say a fire coulds result.

Anyone who goes camping knows about open fire bans.

Sorry I didn't say ESTES, but coming over from the Estes forum it's just natural to go on about Estes products without mentioning their name.

Like I mentioned above, thet were known as the Kaboom motors.