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Originally Posted by BEC
I think they call it "Fast Jack". Yes, black smoky exhaust, and a muted sound. Very different from the Quest black powder motors, especially those made in China.
I have seen but have never used the Tiger Tail igniters. Since then there have been the Quest Q2 igniters, which were similar to the Estes Solar igniter in appearance and behavior. Then came the much-prized-for-clustering Q2G2s. These were supplied with the Chinese-made black powder motor. These are a blob of black conductive pyrogen on the end of fine blue or red-insulated wire and are the ones that will fire on a continuity check if the check indicator is an incandescent bulb. 150mA will light them every time. But that same characteristic made them popular for cluster use (and drag races). They came with a small red "straw" (actually, I think, a short length of a small-diameter plastic coffee stir stick) for retention. I never found that to work very well.
I still have a stash of Q2G2s from buying bulk bags of the Chinese B6-4s (which also outperformed their Estes counterparts by a significant margin, helping me win B Cluster Altitude at NARAM-56). For single-motor use, an Estes igniter/starter, held in with a ball of wadding or an orange plug intended for 1/2A/A3 Estes motors, works fine in them.
The Q-Jets are a completely different animal and handle like the small composites that they are.
In my own experience a Q-Jet A3 is a little weaker than an Estes A8 and a Q-Jet B4 is on a par with Estes B4/B6 motors, based on altitudes reached (measured by altimeter) in a given typical sport model.
The C12s significantly outperform Estes C6s (and the new C5-3) and are my favorites of the Q-Jet line by far. The D16 is a C+, really.
To get back to your original question: the "FirstFire Micro Initiators" are safe on Estes controllers, and work just fine on them. They will even work with the little 9V battery-powered Astron II controller (so they should also work with the little pistol-grip-style Quest controller, though I've not actually tried that). The igniters are kind of fragile, and especially on the As require some care to get all the way into where they need to be inserted, as they ignite the motor at the top of the propellant, up against the delay, just like larger composites. There's a lot of empty space in the As (the propellant is short, but up towards the top of the case) so getting the igniter into the slot in the grain takes a little care. There's a bit of black shrink tube on the igniter that will be quite close to the nozzle opening if the igniter is fully inserted.
I have found that if one of these igniters is damaged and the pyrogen is knocked off the bridge wire, they will still fire a Q-Jet just fine as long as the bridge wire is not broken and they are properly installed.
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GOOD...the black, smoky exhaust of the “Fast Jack” propellant would be scale-realistic for flying scale models of the British Skylark sounding rocket (see:
http://www.sat-net.com/serra/skylar_e.htm ), especially the earlier variants that flew from 1957 (such as ASP’s kit:
https://www.asp-rocketry.com/ecomme...rent=8&navPanel ; the 18 mm A3-4 Q-Jet could be used in place of the 13 mm motor mount) up until at least the mid-to-late 1960s, and possibly beyond. Here (see:
http://galacticjourney.org/january-...ounding-rocket/ ) is material on the earlier Skylark versions. The 17.25” (438 mm) diameter Raven rocket motor—several “Marks” of which powered the single-stage, two-stage, and three-stage Skylark vehicles over this sounding rocket’s long career, between 1957 and 2005—was nicknamed “Smoky Sam” because of its black smoke exhaust trail, ^and^:
This short film on ESA’s website (“Skylark: Sounding Space” [25:12], see:
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/..._Sounding_Space ) was produced in 1967 by BAC (British Aircraft Corporation), which manufactured the rockets (later BAe took over this work, followed by Matra Marconi—the 441st and last Skylark, a two-stage [Goldfinch II/Raven XI] Skylark 7, flew from Esrange in Sweden on May 2, 2005:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4504623.stm [the Brazilian VSB-30 sounding rocket
https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf...&sclient=psy-ab , which was designed as a direct Skylark replacement, is now flying with existing Skylark cylindrical payload modules and nose cones, just as Aerobee 350 and other rockets’ payload modules fly aboard other U.S. sounding rockets, such as the Terrier-Improved Malemute, today]). Also:
The BAC motion picture shows several launches of single-stage Skylarks (and at least one static firing of a Raven motor; interestingly, it too was less loud than one would expect), which were very smoky, as well as firings of two-stage (Cuckoo-boosted; the Cuckoo used double-base propellant, while the Goldfinch and Goldfinch II burned composite propellant) Skylark vehicles. The final variants were the single-stage Skylark 5 (powered by a Raven XI motor), the two-stage Skylark 7 (it used a *finless* Goldfinch II first stage motor [and three optional Imp spin motors, to reduce impact dispersion on small ranges]; the Skylark 7 was the most-used variant), and the three-stage (Goldfinch II / Raven XI / Cuckoo IV) Skylark 12. As well:
Thank you for the further confirmation regarding the compatibility of the Estes and Quest igniters and launch controllers. (The launch controller in the Estes Tandem-X Launch Set--in my "care package"--is a red Electron Beam one, which uses four "AA" batteries [for a total of six volts, rather than nine volts].) I don't think I ever had or used any Quest Q2 igniters, but the long-lead Q2G2 ones sound familiar, although I don't recall using any Quest igniters other than Tiger Tails and--once--their earliest-type MicroMaxx igniters (to launch a Tomahawk Cruise Missile RTF rocket, which made a perfect flight and landing...on the flat roof of a storage building across the street from my old house, down the street :-) ).