We had 3 teams in TARC this year and between them they launched 90 times. Only one is going to finals. The lack of RMS consistency was astounding. Delays in the same batch of motors varied from 6 seconds to 14 seconds. One team had two CATOs on official certification flights. The second one was a complete failure to ignite the ejection charge, resulting in the loss of $200 worth of equipment. The team tried EFCs because the delays were so bad. The EFCs failed three times in 20 flights even though they were cleaned and tested before each flight. The EFC in each of those three flights indicated that the glow plug had fired.

One motor just sat on the pad and chuffed.

On one flight a team hit a good qualifying score, next flight (official qualification flight) with same motor, same batch, same person prepping, same weight, same rocket the motor was just a plain dud. It only achieved 433 feet. The next day another team used the same motor, same batch, similar basic rocket design, same weight and qualified for finals midpack.

One Aerotech SU motor blew up on the pad.

So our teams are using different motors next year. They may even revert to (gasp) black powder.

Jeff Lane

Sorry, I never got back to this.

It turned out that the principal wasn't there for the final flying day so another student prepped the motor this tim.

It seemed that (I forgot what) was being installed upside down. (by the principal) The senior who prepped the motor on that last Saturday of flights started assembling the reloads correctly and we were having consistant delay times.

Unfortunately not good enough I guess.

They wound up with a scor of 32 with wasn't good enough for the finals.

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