Carl,

At WSMC last summer the Chinese were flying two step single stage motors. High initial thrust followed by slow sustain. They sounded like staged separate motors but were just single motors with two different steps to their burn. Very interesting sounding.

I presume they were using them in various events but I personally only witnessed them being used by the junior team in parachute duration (they flew in the lane next to Emma with the US juniors). The Chinese didn't do particularly well in that event but there was so much lift that day that it just didn't matter what motor you used. Realistically, the parachute and streamer duration models are so lightweight that you don't really need any increased thrust at liftoff. With pistons even an A1 will get up to stability speed by the time it leaves the piston.

I know these 10mm motors are just thought experiments at this point but our biggest disadvantage on the US Spacemodeling team is that we don't have 10mm motors to develop and practice with (at this point we don't even have a 13mm booster motor to practice with). Our best altitude flight this year in S1b (B-altitude) was over 100 meters below the Slovenian winner. So we could REALLY use some American 10mm A 1.5s.

Steve