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  #11  
Old 03-29-2011, 08:44 AM
Jerry Irvine's Avatar
Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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If it were hard coded in the current revision cycle of 1122/1127 NAR would be compelled to follow it.

Yes NAR could simply do a stroke of the pen change without that, but their MO is to "codify everything" in NFPA code. That BTW is bad practice as compared to increasing exemption language.

NAR has already seen the huge benefits of exemption language with the ATF suit outcome. They should mimmick and expand on the principal across as many codes as they have input on. Particularly NFPA, safety code, DOT, FAA.

Jerry
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  #12  
Old 03-29-2011, 03:04 PM
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It is absolutely positively IDIOTIC that motors once certified EVER become de-certed for sport flying unless for high cato rates/safety. Even then I'd rather error on the side of leaving them CERTED, not de-certed.
Then again, I'd even faver a ZERO cert process. If a company makes 'em let MARKET FORCES weed out the junk from the good ones.
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  #13  
Old 03-29-2011, 03:49 PM
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Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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GH I agree with you. NAR and authorities are married to a cert system (and SU) due to G. Harry's efforts. I agree the solution is once certified, always certified, especially since certs affect the whole market, not just NAR members which are a low single digit percentage of the market.

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  #14  
Old 03-29-2011, 05:00 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
Then again, I'd even faver a ZERO cert process. If a company makes 'em let MARKET FORCES weed out the junk from the good ones.



I can't go for that...no can do...

If every random Tom, Dick and Harry can make motors with no one checking their safety, this stuff will be banned in many jurisdictions.


Bill
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  #15  
Old 03-29-2011, 05:04 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
It is absolutely positively IDIOTIC that motors once certified EVER become de-certed for sport flying unless for high cato rates/safety. Even then I'd rather error on the side of leaving them CERTED, not de-certed.
Then again, I'd even faver a ZERO cert process. If a company makes 'em let MARKET FORCES weed out the junk from the good ones.
The only motors that get decert'd are the ones flown at sanctioned, club launches, right? The motor labels do not include expiration dates, so, for the lone wolf, unknowing dads taking their kids to fly a few in the park, the motors are still certified. That's what that little NAR logo on the side of the motor means, right?

More seriously, I think, in the early days of the hobby, the certification was much more critical to the success of the burgeoning hobby. NAR certification helped legitimize the motors, and the hobby, too.

Fast forward 50 years, we have a society which is more insurance-oriented. If somebody makes something, they must have liability insurance, and if they have liability insurance, they must be doing it right, or the insurer wouldn't underwrite them. So there's a sort-of implied certification in that.

OTOH, the insurer probably won't insure them without some sort of NAR-S&T or TMT approval, or possibly a much more expensive UL label. Given the choices, the motor manufacturers are quick to use the much more affordable NAR/TRA resources rather than UL, who charges like $15k to answer the phone. The key point is that some form of certification is necessary unless the manufacturer is some sort of uninsured renegade.

Thus, the insurance companies and lawyers are the "market forces" that dictate the need for certification.

Doug

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  #16  
Old 03-29-2011, 05:06 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ghrocketman
It is absolutely positively IDIOTIC that motors once certified EVER become de-certed for sport flying unless for high cato rates/safety. Even then I'd rather error on the side of leaving them CERTED, not de-certed.
Then again, I'd even faver a ZERO cert process. If a company makes 'em let MARKET FORCES weed out the junk from the good ones.
The one change in the rules that makes sense to me, that I see as passable, is not decertifying motors from vendors still in business. The idea, as I've read on the web, is that decertification is necessary to weed out motors from vendors who are no longer in business, who are no longer around to stand behind their products.

But Estes is still around. Why did NAR decert the A8-0 just 'cause it was no longer made (until recently being returned to production)? Estes was still around to stand behind it.

It makes more sense to decert MPC motors or Vulcan motors after 5 years OOP (or whatever the time limit is) but decert'ing motors from companies still in business doesn't make sense (except for safety issues ala E15's, I-69's, etc).

Doug

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  #17  
Old 03-29-2011, 05:13 PM
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Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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As Pat Miller once pointed out to me, only two motors have ever been decertified for cause. MPC because after the sale, a couple of container loads of motors were stored wrong and "skunked". Rocket Development Corp who had motors which aged so badly, consistently, once the production lots were X months old, and the company stopped making them, they decerted the remaining few.

No others. They were BP, BTW. That was the early 1970's.

Jerry
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  #18  
Old 03-29-2011, 07:50 PM
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luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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The cert should be nothing more than a 'stamp of approval' that the motor has been through a statistically significant testing program and the design passed muster-- nothing more. It SHOULD be "once certed always certed", EXCEPT in the case of a demonstrable statistically significant decrease in the safety of the motor(s) in question, for whatever reason (lapses in manufacturing quality, storage issues, etc.) If a motor is "safety certified" then it should be "innocent until proven guilty" by testing and dercertified should it be PROVEN to have a high enough number of "unsafe" motors out there. Motors can be perfectly safe when manufactured and BECOME unsafe through environmental or storage conditions or other factors... and some designs are more prone to this than others... some were "borderline" and YET THEY WERE CERTIFIED (the D13 and E15 come to mind) until they proved to have too high a failure rate and were decerted.

THE MAIN PROBLEM with the cert process is that it is intrinsically intertwined with the COMPETITION MOTOR CERTIFICATION process... the idea was, that only 'presently manufactured or recently discontinued but still widely available' motors should be certified for contest use. I don't compete and don't give a rat's posterior what motors are certified or not for contest use. Now, I understand the value of having a list of "approved motors" that are CONTEST CERTIFIED for competition, as a sort of 'handicap' to level the playing field for all competitors, but that should have NO EFFECT on flying out the stocks of available motors in regular sport flying unrelated to competition, so long as the motors haven't been proven UNSAFE due to design, age, storage, etc...

That would be the RIGHT way to do it... Course since I'm not a NAR member I can fly any motor I want whether certified or not and not have to worry about it, so long as I'm not flying with the club...

This "cert/noncert" nonsense is one of the things that really ticks me off about NAR... Nonmembership has it's privileges... LOL

Later! OL JR
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  #19  
Old 03-29-2011, 08:50 PM
Peter Olivola Peter Olivola is offline
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If NAR were certifying a manufacturing process, as is the case with some military contracting, this would be a workable solution. The NAR certifies a small number of production samples, not the manufacturing process. That's why your proposal isn't workable.

Your comments about competition certification are inaccurate and unrelated to the issue.

The most compelling reason I can muster for continuing the current regime is the behavior of black powder motors over time in storage. Unless confined to a rather narrow range of temperature variations, black powder grains will eventually develop cracks. Just transporting motors without using them, as is the case with many flyers, subjects them to both temperature variation and vibration. As a consumer certification group, the NAR can't afford to assume that motors will be stored correctly for long periods of time.

A much better analogy than yours is the problem airlines experience with planes subject to pressurization being required to undergo periodic inspections. How could that be applied to consumer rocket motors? It can't and until it can it's better to err on the side of safety.

Quote:
Originally Posted by luke strawwalker
The cert should be nothing more than a 'stamp of approval' that the motor has been through a statistically significant testing program and the design passed muster-- nothing more. It SHOULD be "once certed always certed", EXCEPT in the case of a demonstrable statistically significant decrease in the safety of the motor(s) in question, for whatever reason (lapses in manufacturing quality, storage issues, etc.) If a motor is "safety certified" then it should be "innocent until proven guilty" by testing and dercertified should it be PROVEN to have a high enough number of "unsafe" motors out there. Motors can be perfectly safe when manufactured and BECOME unsafe through environmental or storage conditions or other factors... and some designs are more prone to this than others... some were "borderline" and YET THEY WERE CERTIFIED (the D13 and E15 come to mind) until they proved to have too high a failure rate and were decerted.

THE MAIN PROBLEM with the cert process is that it is intrinsically intertwined with the COMPETITION MOTOR CERTIFICATION process... the idea was, that only 'presently manufactured or recently discontinued but still widely available' motors should be certified for contest use. I don't compete and don't give a rat's posterior what motors are certified or not for contest use. Now, I understand the value of having a list of "approved motors" that are CONTEST CERTIFIED for competition, as a sort of 'handicap' to level the playing field for all competitors, but that should have NO EFFECT on flying out the stocks of available motors in regular sport flying unrelated to competition, so long as the motors haven't been proven UNSAFE due to design, age, storage, etc...

That would be the RIGHT way to do it... Course since I'm not a NAR member I can fly any motor I want whether certified or not and not have to worry about it, so long as I'm not flying with the club...

This "cert/noncert" nonsense is one of the things that really ticks me off about NAR... Nonmembership has it's privileges... LOL

Later! OL JR
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  #20  
Old 03-29-2011, 09:07 PM
Ltvscout Ltvscout is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Olivola
The most compelling reason I can muster for continuing the current regime is the behavior of black powder motors over time in storage. Unless confined to a rather narrow range of temperature variations, black powder grains will eventually develop cracks. Just transporting motors without using them, as is the case with many flyers, subjects them to both temperature variation and vibration. As a consumer certification group, the NAR can't afford to assume that motors will be stored correctly for long periods of time.

That doesn't hold water in my book. I can still fly C6-5's mfg in '69. Why? Because they're still certified, yet they've gone through 42 years worth of temp cycling and handling.
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