The last monthly launch of the Superstition Spacemodeling Society for 1999, held Saturday, December 11th, was a truly remarkable event. Not so much because there was a huge turnout, or a large number of people certified, but rather because of the Arizona debut of a brand new product from AeroTech Consumer Aerospace: the new BlackMax Econojet motor.

New AeroTech F23 and G38 Econojets

Space Modeling Solutions, ever present at these events, turned up to the launch with 72 packages of the new 29mm BlackMax motors, in both the F23 and G38 impulse, with both 4 and 7 second delays.

As a result of brisk sales, 13 flights were recorded. All of them were documented as 'good flights,' which means that there was a successful ejection and a safe recovery. Having provided some stats, an eyewitness account of how these motors performed is in order.

The BlackMax Econojet is instantly distinguishable from it's White Lightning counterpart. The package features grey, red, and white artwork on the face, and standard thrust curve data on the reverse side.

The data indicates a slightly higher peak thrust with a shorter burn time, on average, than the White Lightning Econojet.

The end result is a slightly lower average thrust curve. However, flying the new BlackMax is a completely new experience! For starters, loading this motor is eased by the fact that the labels seem a bit less hostile towards removal. This is important to keep the motors from adhering to the inside of the motor mount tube.

If you're expecting a difficult ignition, on the assumption that the BlackMax is similar to the Black Jack formulation, your fears are unfounded.

These motors light up NOW when the ignitors are given the proper amount of current. The ignitions observed at the Superstition launch all pressurized lickety-split, and got off the pad in the same manner.

The resulting flights were exciting, with lots of dark smoke, and a slightly louder roar than the standard Econojet.

There were plenty of cheers, whistles, and clapping, which seemed the natural response to these flights.

Another observation was that the BlackMax motors did indeed perform very similarly to the White Lightning Econojets in terms of flight profile.

This means that until the simulation data for these motors is widely available, simulations based on standard White Lightning Econojet data will produce very close ejection delay information.

However, it's also important to note that the delays (as observed by this author) seemed a tad short. However, no actual measurments of the delays were made, and no objections on the part of the flyers were noted.

So after the actual experience of seeing a number of these motors fly, this author would have to give them a definite thumbs up! Better yet is the fact that these are available at Econojet prices, which means that everybody can "fly more," and "spend less." For the money, you just won't get a more exciting flight out of your 29mm bird!