The last couple weeks have been slow. This, of course, is the norm.

We tried the decomposition of Nitrous Oxide. This took far more heat than what we were told. I could never get high flow rates to react. When I increased the flow the catalyst wire usually broke. It would quickly go from red to white and fall apart. It would have been nice if it worked reliably but the standard igniter has its uses as well. We went from lab bench tests to outdoor tests very quickly with the standard igniter method.

We put the puzzle we call our igniter together. We are using Propane and Nitrous Oxide for propellants. We had plenty of hard starts. We could hear our spark plug tone change as the propellants entered the chamber. The system was not automated. We have a switch to start, open, and close everything. This method helps to get down our sequence.

I am working on a new controller and hope it will help us to resolve the spark issues. The new controller allows us to change the duty cycle and frequency of the spark. This should allow us to find a value that works best with the propellants in the chamber. We might even switch from the nitrous to compressed air. The Nitrous Oxide is hard to ignite. We like it because we can store a lot of it since it is liquid in the bottle. Reliability is the key so we will be testing oxygen soon.