A friend and I took advantage of the good weather to make a comparison of the new Estes StarTech starters to the current ones. We’ve all seen the video posted on the web, but I wanted something a little more quantitative, and he was more than happy to put the drag race function of the new HARA wireless controller to use in this task. We taped an old starter and the new StarTech starter to the side of a box and I set my GoPro to 720p/120 frames per second to record the action - pretty simple experiment.

The results are:

At the moment of ignition (t = 0 seconds), the old starter burns hotter than the new Startech.

However, 1 video frame (0.008 seconds) later, the StarTech is producing a prodigious amount of flame.

The old starter is dead after 57 frames (0.475 seconds).

The new StarTech is like the Energizer Bunny - it keeps going and going, still emitting sparks 232 frames after ignition (1.935 seconds) and finally dying at frame 354 (2.953 seconds).

So basically the new StarTech starters will torch the inside of the motor for a good 2 seconds and be hot for 3 seconds. I’d say that would light even stubborn BP motors. It also might singe the bottom part of a heavy, slow moving rocket as it gets going.

I have posted the video to YouTube here (StarTech starter is on the left).

You can get a smaller version of the video with the frame numbers added on the bottom from my ftp site .

I’m attaching a few stills from the video.

GH should like these starters

Attached Thumbnails

                 

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Bill Cooke
NAR #31312
TRA #19705
SAM #0001
Huntsville, AL

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