Roy, Bob,

Thank you both for such great info!

GH, another reason the bigger kit manufacturers had their own engines is that for some of them the majority of their sales are to schools. School sales are remarkably repeatable from year to year. One rocket company administrator in speaking to me once referred to school sales as being "like an annuity."

Schools definitely want a single source supplier for both kits and motors. My understanding is that a major impetus for Quest to start the Q-Jet line was to replace the Chinese-made motors that went away, again, largely with school sales in mind.

Steve

As much as I can complain about the current/past hobby distributor model, it does have the benefit of making it easier for a hobby shop to get product. A hobby shop can have an account with a distributor to get all types of products as opposed to having to have an account with each manufacturer and having to meet minimum orders and shipping costs.

It would be a real bear for each manufacturer to have to set up a larger accounts receivable department and go after those who were late paying or don't pay. AeroTech was never stiffed by a 'true' hobby distributor.

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Bob
S.A.M. # 0014

Bob-
Understood.
I was looking at the issue from a "customer/consumer" point of view.
To us, all the distributors/middlemen do is add no-value-added costs to obtaining the final product.

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

After MRC announced the Concept II product line I was eager to get my hands on it.

I was able to get ahold of the product in the Spring of 1990 and wanted to test the motors.
Unlike most rocketeers, I had access to motor testing equipment and personnel who could operate it.

One of the AeroTech motor testing loadcells was set up and calibrated for these MRC 18mm motors. To make things interesting an equivalent Estes motor would also be fired on the same stand to compare the data.

At this time the AeroTech testing equipment still used a stripchart paper readout.

Dan Meyer operated the testing equipment while I loaded each motor into the test stand.

The results were interesting. Overall the MRC motors had a lower total impulse than the Estes motors but the MRC motors had more accurate delay times.

I took this information and provided it to my favorite rocketry newsletter (Remember those?) WARP 9 published by the San Diego NAR Section, DART.

Attached is the page from the issue of WARP 9 which displays the thrust curves and other information from the tests.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Bob
S.A.M. # 0014

Fascinating! Thanks, Bob!

That’s cool, did you have to count the boxes under the curve to get the total inpulse?

Very cool, thanks for posting that data Bob

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Steve Naquin
TRA# 677 L2
NAR# 85518 L2
SAM# 0052

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When I was a wee lad, there was no such thing as a hobby shop in my town, just a shelf or two in a tobacco shop that was run by an RC plane flyer where you could get dope or fuel or balsa and maybe a plane kit or two. Then there was a small group of 5&10 stores whose "Toy & Hobby" sections were handled by a woman whose house my parents bought in the 50's, Mrs. Tucker.

When I started doing rockets I'd stop by her shop and ask why she didn't have any. She said she could special order for me, and I ordered a couple of things, but still would rather mail order. When Apollo 11 rolled around she started beefing up her hobby selection, and one day I walked in and she gave me a Walthour & Hood catalog. It was like a SIG catalog on steroids (if I'd known what steroids were then). I poured through it, found all sorts of things I wanted. But I kept my wish list and recommendations centered around rocketry. She would let me in on her constraints, I could see her prices, I learned the concept of net 30, 60, 90. I got to understand that if W&H didn't have a deal with Space Age Industries or FSI or Semroc, Mrs Tucker was not gonna be able to get their products in. And I also saw how it made things simpler for her. She could get Estes, Centuri, and MPC easily. MPC might even give her some advertising credit if she were to mention MPC in an ad in the paper.

It was a good introduction to the wholesale/retail business.

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Roy
nar12605

then there was the scandal that got me a fedex'ed letter from Bill Stine and Fred ???? at MRC.
Short story: a club member got a trailblazer, flew it on an MRC C6-3, it limped into the air and hit the ground before ejection. I wrote up the flight in our club's newsletter (which of course, we sent to all the manufacturers).

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Roy
nar12605

What, in essence, was said in the letter? If you are willing to say....

Earl

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Earl L. Cagle, Jr.
NAR# 29523
TRA# 962
SAM# 73
Owner/Producer
Point 39 Productions

Rocket-Brained Since 1970