Does anyone know if Estes changed the thrust curve of the A8 engines? A tech doc from the 70's shows only a spike for boost. Today's website shows a spike followed by a flatter sustaining thrust like the B and C engines.
Was the 70's doc incorrect, or was that how they made them in the 70's?
-John
The question arose when I tried to update the thrust curve data for my Model Rocket Performance program.
The experimental data in Estes TR-11 shows well-built Alpha rockets reaching 116m on average with A8-5 engines. My program calculates this within +-2m using the original spike curve.
However, when I upgraded the thrust data for the 'new' A8-5 engines, I get 154m. Off by more than 32%.
Since the program works well for other engines; I think it's a data issue and not the code.
Which leads me to believe old A8 engines had only boost thrust and not sustainer thrust.
I guess for now, I'll just keep both old and new A8 engines in the database.
-J
I dug up an Estes publication ("The Classic Collection") which has a copy of TN-1 in it. It shows a thrust curve for the A8 that matches that for the B4 except for that long tail. Peak thrust of about 13N and all done in 0.3 seconds.
So it is possible that they really were made that way. The B4 would just be an A8 with extra BP for some end burning action.
When and why that changed I have no idea. The test data on the NAR web site says it was collected in 1995 so sometime before then.
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