Tripoli San Diego built a 1/7 scale Soviet Vostok for their annual Plaster Blaster launch in early October 2004. The rocket was designed to fly on a total of twenty 54mm motors, 18 lit on the pad, two air-started after ejecting the side boosters.

We decided to use Cesaroni Technologies Pro54® motors exclusively for the project. The Cesaroni motors are very easy to assemble, easy to clean, and have an extremely reliable low current ignition system. With only the supplied electric match needed to very reliably ignite the motor (it uses a compressed black powder pellet at the head end of the motor), the concerns of a high current system to fire 18 igniters was removed. It is also much easier to air-start with the low current igniters, using one simple timer to start both the air-starts.

The preparation time to load all 20 motors was less than 45 minutes! All igniters were wired in parallel to a single channel of our wireless system.

All motors ignited simultaneously, and the vehicle had a perfectly straight ascent. The air-starts also both performed perfectly. The rocket was recovered without damage and will fly again soon.

The entire Vostok team and especially myself would like to thank the folks at Cesaroni for helping us get the project off the ground and for making the motors that made the flight possible.