Coming from experimental APCP motors, LD and myself were ready for a new rocketry project and had been considering designing and building a liquid bipropellant ETHALOX engine for some time. However, with no prior experience in liquid propellants, this represented a significant step up from the relatively easy solid rocket motors we had been making. Therefore, when HalfCat Rocketry introduced the Mojave Sphinx rocket along with excellent supportive documentation, we decided to build one and gain some valuable liquid bipropellant experience along the way.

Our plan was to adhere as closely as possible to the proven Mojave Sphinx design to increase the project’s success rate, while modifying the design where necessary to accommodate for the available metric materials in Europe. Since we have metalworking tools in our home workshop, we manufacture most of the components ourselves as part of our AER hobby.

We started with the build in December and the schedule is to static test by the end of March and, all going well, to fly the NITROCAT in September during our usual SARON launch day.

NITROCAT has been assigned with serial number 11.