Beach Shoot #14 - Titanium Helicopters
Date: 2003-11-29
Description
Same design as the previous 9.5 mm ID helicopter devices. 50 mm long, rammed on the nipple to leave room for the stabilizer stick.
Propellant of 10% Titanium, 90% meal powder.
One device was fireproofed by dipping the case in waterglass at the nozzle end. The other was left natural, it was hoped that both would be recovered and a comparison could be made.
The fireproofed device was fitted with a small payload of KP Silver stars and a pulverone break charge.
Comments
Very *Bright* display.
Unfortunately the fireproofing worked so well on the second device the fuse didn't ignite it. It was recovered and will be refused and tried again.
The first 'natural' device worked well, a very bright Titanium spark performance. Like the previous Titanium device (who's video was lost) it peaked before burn-out and came back down. It didn't fly quite as high as the previous device which is probably because of the slightly different thrust vector, more dedicated to spinning than lift.
It appears this low thrust towards the end of the burn is a feature of the composition, the device was recovered and it was observed that the hole had not enlarged very much. In fact the enlargment is so minor that I don't believe fireproofing serves any purpose for these relatively short-burn devices.
The burn was somewhat unusual, initially quite bright, then in settled down to almost pure charcoal effect, then in changed again near apogee to very bright Titanium sparks. The cause of this effect is not well understood, it appears to be similar to the varigated Aluminium effect of my RP composition. The previous Titanium helicopter did not exhibit this effect. I'll rescreen the propellant batch to ensure it is not a settling of the metal to the bottom by gravity.
Attachments
| title | type | size |
|---|---|---|
| Test Video | video/x-msvideo | 1.009 Mbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture | image/jpeg | 41.180 kbytes |
| Post-Mortem Picture #1 | image/jpeg | 41.428 kbytes |
| Post-Mortem Picture #2 | image/jpeg | 27.034 kbytes |