Somehow I thought this had been announced here. Some of you may already be
aware.This is a post by Steve Shannon, TRA President on the TRA forum from last
month:
"At LDRS 36 in 2017, Rick Maschek requested the Board to consider amending the
Tripoli Research Safety Code to allow steel nozzles for use with sugar motors
used at Tripoli Research Launches. At the time we requested that he provide
data to our Tripoli Research Committee Chair, Dr. Terry McCreary, to
demonstrate that the use of sugar motors would not increase risk. The concern
as I understand it is that the additional density of steel would lead to
increased momentum and thus greater range in the event of a nozzle being spit.
The counter to that is that nozzles in properly flying rockets are spit
downward rather than horizontally. For static tests it's possible to require
that they be held vertically so the direction of a spit nozzle would be
vertical and thus have limited horizontal range. NFPA does not prohibit steel
nozzles.
Since that time Rick and Terry and I have discussed this electronically several
times, but we never did really receive data.
Honestly, most of us don't feel that steel nozzles necessarily increase risk
when used for sugar motors as long as all other rules are followed.
So, rather than leaving this unresolved, Terry proposed that we provisionally
allow the use of steel nozzles with sugar motors for both static burns and
flights as long as the static burns are vertical. The board voted on his
proposal last week and it passed easily.
The motion was for steel nozzle usage to be allowed for this calendar year
(2019). During that time we want Prefects and users to come to this thread and
relate any first hand accounts about their use of steel nozzles, both good and
bad, and especially observations about spit nozzles. Of course for flights, an
angled blast deflector could redirect a spit nozzle, so observations about that
should also be made. At the end of 2019 Terry and the board will review the
data and make a determination whether to incorporate that change permanently in
the Tripoli Research Safety Code. If we do nothing, this provisional permission
to use steel nozzles will expire at the end of 2019.
I should also point out that this is not mandatory. Local Prefects have the
latitude to ban the use of steel nozzles at their home fields. Local Prefects
always have the authority to adopt policies that exceed NFPA and the Tripoli
Safety Codes."
Rick