While they will tell you that these are regulated, their own regulations don't support that. APCP is specifically listed, but ANCP, KNCP, sugar motors and BP motors are not listed.heada wrote:If you ask the ATF they will tell you that APCP, ANCP and KNCP based rocket motors are under their regulations. BP motors that contain more than 62.5g of propellant would be under this rule as well.
Nitrate based explosives are listed, but AN and KN motors aren't explosive. For that matter, neither is APCP. Burn rates just don't support it. The lawsuit in progress will prove that out.
The ATF will always err on the side of caution, and if you ask them if something is regulated, they will tell you it is. The law prevents them from saying something is an explosive without evidence to support it.
They have proven over and over again that they don't know what the hell they are talking about, and I believe that the judge presiding over the lawsuit will say the same thing and remove APCP from the explosive list.
The only testing they have actually done on the subject (I've read the report) is so far off the mark as to be funny. They found that bond paper burns faster than APCP in most cases (and it does) and also found that APCP in a J350 motor burns at over 7ips...actual burn rates are much much lower than that. On the order of 1/4 ips...a J350 that burned at 7ips would have a burn time of 0.08 seconds...they took the length of the motor divided the buy the burn time and arrived at a "burn rate". The error they made was that a J350 doesn't burn from end to end, but rather from the inside to the outside, the web thickness is about 1/2 inch and the motor takes about 1.5 seconds to burn...
Sorry for the rant, you've touched a sensitive subject. I'll be the first to comply with the regulations surrounding rocketry, but will also speak up when the regulations don't make any sense, and are based on pseudo science.