This blog covers the day to day progress of water rocket development by the Air Command Water Rockets team. It is also a facility for people to provide feedback and ask questions.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Side Deployment Parachute Mechanism Tutorial

It's been a while since the last update, but rocket development has continued. We are currently working on the G2 boosters and have been doing a number of tests. We’ve also been building up our spliced bottle stock pile and spare deployment mechanisms for our rockets. It’s always good to have both components on hand so that we can assemble rockets quickly and have spares when they crash. While making the spare nosecones we took some time to document how we build them.  

The new side deployment mechanism tutorial is mostly based on our previous version. This one incorporates a couple of improvements we’ve been using for a while that makes them easier to build and more reliable.

And a big thank you also goes to Doug from Escape Water Rockets for helping us source some components for the Servo Timer II when the local supplier ran out and was going to take a couple of months to get them back in stock. 

4 comments:

Oscar van de Leur said...

Thanks George for the detailed instructions!

I received the Servo Timer II a couple of weeks ago and will now shamelessly copy this super design for my first rocket with an actual recovery system!

It is time to quit shouting "Heads up!" and making a hole in the ground with each launch.

George Katz said...

Thanks Oscar,

Glad to hear the tutorial will be of use. :) What sort of a rocket will you be flying?

Oscar van de Leur said...

Main pressure vessel will be a symetrical splice out of 3 1.5l bottles. It will have corriflute fins and your side deployment system.

I have not done any simulations yet but depending on the outcome of that I might extend the pressure vessel with a single 1.5l bottle and a tornado coupling to get a decent altitude for parachute deployment/recovery.
I will not be reinforcing any bottles yet so my launch pressure is probably limited to 90 - 100 psi and I am not yet sure how this compares to the dry weight of the rocket.

George Katz said...

That sounds like a good rocket Oscar. Good luck with the build and test flights.