Interesting high lights of the NAR BoD Meeting and ...

Bruce Lee.

The team had built a huge ejection cannon to eject the parachute out of their Mini Cooper. The ejection charge went off during flight prep. The cannon came loose due to poor welding and injured Bruce's arm.

Bruce had an arterial bleed and damaged tendons near the wrist. He was transported to the local hospital and then was taken to a Dallas hospital for surgery. I think he was back at the hotel the same day.

Brian Elfert

There is one. It sounds just like an ejection charge. 8-)

That's BS. jerry was kicked out for hosting launches and claiming to have waivers, when in fact he had none.

IIRC, there was talk on Master Blasters about "static electricity". Its not necessary to have internal power available to fire a sensitive charge. In other circuits, I have also seen startup transients initiate outputs at power on.

The disconnect/shunt combination would allow the circuit to energize, POST, and indicators (LED?) could show output status prior to connecting the actual charge.

Perhaps a best practices for ejection charges/circuits is needed in the FAQ. (before it is imposed upon us by the clueless.)

4 out of 5 is 80%..not too shabby....thanks for the truth....wouldn't want to 'distort' an facts..... got the cpsc mixed up with the nar..my bad....

shockie B)

Shunting has its own safety issues. Your electronics can't tell if the shunt has been removed (because a shunt looks like an igniter), and if the shunt is not removed then the charge is not going to fire and the rocket is going to crash.

The odds of some bizzarre power-up surge is a lot less likely than forgetting to un-shunt or a failure in the un-shunting, IMHO. Most (but not all) ejection charge problems are a result of user error. I know that some Missileworks altimeters will fire the charges immediately if the battery polarity is reversed, and to make matters worse they reversed the location of the + and - terminals from one model to the next. That's just downright poor design.

Howdy Rick,

Hope all's well out west--May get a chance to wander out again in the months ahead...

Same reply as before, it all depends on your avionics design... Here are some of the switches we used:

Relatively pricey rascals--All of mine worked fine as did the boxes plugged into the powerbuss.

Regards to all, Andy

p.s. Bob Sanford (sp?) still around?

This is one of my biggest complaints with NAR -- they move at a speed slower than molasses on a January day in the Arctic!

Case in point? Cross-certification of motors with CAR. This is something that could EASILY have been handled via email/phone calls, but they had to exhibit analysis paralysis and wait until meeting face-to-face at NARAM.

Knee-jerk rash decisions are bad, but so is taking forever to make a decision. There IS a happy middle ground.

-Kevin

This wouldn't have helped with the Master Blasters incident -- the car was on the ramp and they were getting it ready to go. Bruce was in the process of arming the electronics when the charge went off.

-Kevin

Designing the thing properly in the first place would have prevented it!

When you remove the disconnect it would have fired in any case. I fail to see why that is any safer than firing when you turn on the altimeter.

Chris

No surgery; just stitches to get him sewn back up, and a cast to protect it while it healed.

He's okay, other than a gnarly looking scar on his wrist where the skin was torn, and one heck of a scare for all involved! Kudos to the member of his team who could be seen quickly grabbing a cloth to wrap around it and put pressure on the wound.

If you watch the aerial view, you can see someone behind him turning around, grabbing a cloth, shaking it off, then wrapping it around Bruce's wrist and applying pressure.

-Kevin

I'd have to disagree. Hybrids are different, but no more of a pain than other motors.

Most of what I fly anymore are hybrids.

-Kevin

Ask the manufacturer, ask the vendor, ask others before you spend your money.

I've built altimeters/timers and pyro control circuitry. It's not exactly difficult to design something with good assurance that it will operate and fail safely.

The only time I've seen that happen (twice on the same day with the same controller, and another time by someone else) was a homebuilt controller built by someone who didn't know what they were doing and didn't understand that continuity checks are a bad thing, mmmkay.

Chris

And that's a good reason to design your airframe so you still have motor backup, at least on drogue.

I agree.

Chris

OK, let's assume for the moment that Jerry did not have the claimed 15K waiver for the launch. Let's assume that Jerry lied and told people he did have a 15K waiver. What was done to someone who lied, saying his rocket would go 12K, when it really went 25K? Was he too kicked out? Or was he given a performance record for a flight that broke a waiver that he claimed didn't even exist?

-- Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L >>> To reply, there's no internet on Mars (yet)!

There were only 4 items on your list. How do you get 80% out of that. ANd I'd call NAR "guilty" on 1.5 of the 4 counts.

bob: stop splitting hairs..3 out 4 then....75%... the Vashon thing was before Bunny's tenure....

shockie B)

Well, I just had to respond. What a hoot LOL

*quote* "g)Mark Bundick mad about High Powered Rocket going through windshiled of SUV, yet he allows stunts such as the special link below to go on at the NAR sport range ... double standards as typical from NAR ... see below ... "

no comparison. I was the person who flew the foam cup rocket (and will fly it again too). It flew 3 times at NARAM, the first two times on a cluster of 4 D motors. Not a double standard at all. The rocket in the SUV was a serious problem. It isn't to say that that particular launch was "unsafe", just that a new element was discovered and is now being addressed. Good for all.

On the other hand, the rocket I launched wouldn't have gone through the easy-up if it hit it under power.

It if repulsed and shamed you, I can not IMAGINE your thoughts when that port-a-potty got launched (just as a start).

Also, *quote* "Could you imagine if the rocket pictured in the video, had been powered by a K or L motor?"

Yep, I sure could, which is why it *wasn't* powered by a K or L motor.

In any event, the model is stable, completely safe and performs very well. In the video of the flight (the 2nd by the way), the model was floating in so slowly that it could have been *caught* without fear of any injury. It *wasn't* caught out of respect for the flier (never catch anothers rocket) so they let it drop to the ground.

At worse, if this thing hit them it would have been an irritation, nothing more.

nuf said on *that* subject :) jim