As promised over the past week I decided to build and fire 2 motors. Both were made out of 65/35 KNSU with a core diameter of 0.375″. The nozzles were made out of the hybrid concrete/PVC end-caps. The firings used a new type of ignitors bought from the “firewire” store, which have been tested and work quite well. The first of the tests was successful and has the thrust profile as shown above the total impulse was 76.2 N*s with a specific impulse of roughly 0.75-0.8 (with theoretical density values). This result was quite nice to see as it provided a fast ignition with the firewire initiator and allowed for a faster burn. The second of the firings never ignited, even after going through 4 ignitors. I eventually gave up and cut the motor in half revealing a really nice grain without any voids, and a charred core. I suspect that the reason of the lack of ignition must be attributed to the WD-40 not being dried out enough and creating an insulation layer between the ignitor and the core. I switched to a new supplier of sucrose and the fuel has showed much better burning overall. I am quite happy with the results and as we are moving into the summer continue working with these motors but mainly for developing the RTEM system rather than try to fully optimize these motors. Also, I intend to begin going out to the range much more often and fly some model rockets, something I haven’t done in quite a bit. My updated science fair paper will most likely be posted later this week, so be on the lookout for that. Other than that I hope I can continue on my development of the RTEM and order some new model kits to build (hoping for a Junior-L1 cert. by the end of the summer).