Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Discussion about deployment systems including altimeters, timers, air speed flaps, servo systems, and chemical reactions.
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RaketfuedRockets
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Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by RaketfuedRockets »

Hey there,
in this topic I want to present you the Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism.
It's a side deployment mechanism which uses a tomy timer, but you can also use an electronic timer (for example USWR LaunchPad Altimeter) or whatever you want.
The system is basically a usual parachute mechanism, but we removed all unnecessary components.
The result is a very light, reliable and easy to repair parachute mechanism.
Check out this video to learn more:
[youtube][/youtube]
If you have any questions or ideas to improve this system please feel free to use the reply-button. :wink:
Cheers
Julian from Raketfued
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Blenderite
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by Blenderite »

One of the best videos I have seen explaining the Tomy Timer mechanism. Good job!
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by RaketfuedRockets »

Thank you for the nice words DogLover! :)
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by U.S. Water Rockets »

RaketfuedRockets wrote:Hey there,
in this topic I want to present you the Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism.
It's a side deployment mechanism which uses a tomy timer, but you can also use an electronic timer (for example USWR LaunchPad Altimeter) or whatever you want.
The system is basically a usual parachute mechanism, but we removed all unnecessary components.
The result is a very light, reliable and easy to repair parachute mechanism.
Check out this video to learn more:
[youtube][/youtube]
If you have any questions or ideas to improve this system please feel free to use the reply-button. :wink:
Cheers
Julian from Raketfued
You seem to have come to the same conclusion that we did, and realized that the systems everyone finds on the internet for the past 10 years have a lot of extra parts that you really don't need. There's nothing wrong with that, but we do a lot of unusual experiments and that leads to crashes. For example, our chase camera project had a couple of accidents because the camera tow line would overshoot the rocket and would tangle in the parachute. We realized that a recovery system that takes a long time to build also takes a long time to repair. That's when we started stripping the parts down to the minimum. Perhaps your incentive or motivation was different, but we found that we didn't need to build spare recovery systems because we could build a totally new one in 10 minutes or less, using a simpler design.
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by RaketfuedRockets »

Hey USWR,
as you know we're big fans of simplicity in design and in construction.
We really like the idea of the radial deployment system, but in Germany there are no large bottles available which are suitable for the big "spring" used in the Radial deployment system.
We know that we could connect multiple bottle pieces for that purpose, but we think thats not the perfect solution.
That was the reason that we have decided to continue the development of our "Phoenix" Series (the Phoenix 4 was also very light) instead of using your system.
Also we are very happy with the reliability of the Phoenix Systems. :)
There are plans to use a radial deployment mechanism in the "Swallow 2" rocket to save place, but it's just an idea.
Greetings from Germany. :)
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by Water Rocket Expert »

Worked flawlessly!
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I'm 20
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by RaketfuedRockets »

Thank you :)
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by U.S. Water Rockets »

RaketfuedRockets wrote:Hey USWR,
as you know we're big fans of simplicity in design and in construction.
We really like the idea of the radial deployment system, but in Germany there are no large bottles available which are suitable for the big "spring" used in the Radial deployment system.
We know that we could connect multiple bottle pieces for that purpose, but we think thats not the perfect solution.
That was the reason that we have decided to continue the development of our "Phoenix" Series (the Phoenix 4 was also very light) instead of using your system.
Also we are very happy with the reliability of the Phoenix Systems. :)
There are plans to use a radial deployment mechanism in the "Swallow 2" rocket to save place, but it's just an idea.
Greetings from Germany. :)
Well, in your case if you cannot get a large bottle like that, you could always just get a sheet of thin plastic at a hobby store. They might even sell it at a hardware store or your local equivalent of a "Home Improvement" store. We just picked a bottle to make the parachute cover out of because it would be the simplest solution for a lot of people. Really any kind of sheet plastic would work in the place of a bottle.

But we encourage people to take what we did and see if they can improve it or adapt it to their local materials. This is the best part of the community, where people share ideas and make their own improvements to them. People took our radial deploy design and added their own servo controller or a tomy timer, making it best for their own use. That's great!
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by bugwubber »

Speaking of....
As a local store was cleaning up its Halloween display, I noticed some empty small product cases that were made out of clear acrylic or polycarbonate sheet material. I inquired with the employee, about what their plans were to do with the cases. She replied "put them in the trash". SCORE! The largest sheet was 30"x18".

There is also a product out there RoyalBrites Grid Poster Board that comes in 14x22" size 3 pack. This stuff is not like normal posterboard. It is .012" thickness whereas normal posterboard is .030". This is what I made the Acrophobia to THBBT coupler out of. I'll have to try a radial deploy wrap with the stuff as well although I suspect it will need some CPES added to it.



I
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by U.S. Water Rockets »

For the radial deploy system, you need the plastic to be able to wrap completely around the rocket with a small overlap of 2cm to 5cm. This is pretty easy to make from a bottle of the next size larger volume. A rocket made from 1 liter bottles would use a 1.5 liter or larger bottle for the parachute cover. A rocket made from 1.5 liter bottles would use a parachute cover made from 2 liter or larger bottles.

The height of the parachute cover is the next critical dimension, and so you need to try and find bottles that will fill the distance over the gap. This would be the same kind of bottle used to make a fairing to cover a tornado tube joint. You can make the job of finding a large enough bottle easier by picking bottles for the rocket and payload compartment with blunt tops. Bottles with a very long tapered neck will be hard to bridge. Bottles with a neck that quickly expands to the full bottle width are best. These rounded neck bottles make better joints for tornado tubes as well because the fairing gap is smaller and so the space is not wasted with dead weight.
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by RaketfuedRockets »

Hey USWR,
in Germany there are some "big bottles" (1.5L or 2L) but they all have textures or patterns.
It's a good idea to check out local stores, and we will try to find fitting plastic sheets later next year.
Our first priority in 2015 is to build reinforced and multiple stage rockets.
Greetings from Germany =)
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by U.S. Water Rockets »

RaketfuedRockets wrote:Hey USWR,
in Germany there are some "big bottles" (1.5L or 2L) but they all have textures or patterns.
It's a good idea to check out local stores, and we will try to find fitting plastic sheets later next year.
Our first priority in 2015 is to build reinforced and multiple stage rockets.
Greetings from Germany =)
If you look on ebay, people sell plastic PETG sheets for vacuum molding R/C model bodies. You should be able to get a small roll of 8 to 16 square feet for under $10US. You could probably find the same material at an R/C hobby store locally.
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by RaketfuedRockets »

Today we released the 4th part of our tutorial series "How to build a huge water rocket".
In this video we show the construction of the Phoenix 5 Parachute deployment mechanism:
[youtube][/youtube]
We hope you enjoy the video! :)
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by U.S. Water Rockets »

Thanks for linking to USWR in your videos!
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Re: Phoenix 5 Parachute mechanism

Post by Blenderite »

That is a good video. I have not seen many if any videos detailing how to make a Tomy timer system. Good work!
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