I’ve been making progress on the recovery section of my 6″ diameter rocket. The basic design is a CO2 cartridge, a solenoid, and some tubing blow off the nose cone. Then a drogue chute pulls out the main chute. Eventually, I’ll have something hold the shroud lines of the main chute so the rocket can fall on the drogue until low altitude. But the first flights won’t be to that high altitude so I will let the drogue pull out the main parachute right away.
I got some brackets and mounted the CO2 cartridge/solenoid assemblies in the rocket. There are two redundant systems. It’s possible I might eventually use this rocket for my level 3 certification, and that requires redundant recovery system deployment. The space is tight enough that I figured I should mount two from the start so I won’t get into the situation where I have to rework something to make it fit later. Also, redundant deployment is good in its own right.
One nice feature of a totally pyro-free CO2 deployment system is that I don’t need to use kevlar webbing to resist the heat of a pyro charge. Nylon will work just fine.
