All New Parachute Deployment System Tutorial

Anyone who builds and flies rockets knows how frustrating it can be when the recovery system malfunctions, and the rocket does a swan dive into the Earth. This almost always results in the total loss of the rocket, and anything that was aboard the rocket at the time.  We decided to change all that.

The loss of the rocket itself can be quite painful, as some rockets are made from many bottles and a great deal of time was spent carefully joining them together. The loss of payload can mean an expensive micro camera or altimeter will need to be replaced. But the loss of the deploy system itself is perhaps the most frustrating result, since the commonly available deploy system plans are very time consuming to build.

Chances are that anyone building a Water Rocket Parachute Deployment system went on the internet and downloaded one of the many designs that have evolved from Robert Youens original Horizontal Deploy system, created over a decade ago. Back in those days Water Rocketry was in its infancy and parachute deployment was very primitive. The Youens HDTT system broke new ground and was a major step forward in reliability.

The idea was such an improvement on prior work that it became a de-facto standard and has been copied by many people, with only slight tweaks to personalize the design. The core idea has been copied so many times, yet the only refinements that seem to have been made are cosmetic changes adding complexity to the build that make it more difficult and time consuming and less reliable.

After witnessing the frustrations people were having building these increasingly complex plans circulating the internet, we decided it was time to start over and come up with a clean slate approach that was more reliable, since we wanted a high reliability system for some expensive experimental payloads we plan on launching.

We eventually developed a new concept that is extremely reliable and turned out to be much easier and less costly to make than any other system ever devised. We have named out new parachute system the U.S. Water Rockets Radial Parachute Deploy System.

We have recently completed a complete new tutorial that shows how we developed and built this new system, but we also have documented how the system works, and how it can be adapted to multiple types of water rocket designs.

The new tutorial can be viewed at the following link:
U.S. Water Rockets Radial Parachute Deploy Tutorial

Water Rocket Selfies with a Chase Camera

Our team has a reputation for being fond of aerial photography. We once did the math and found that we have flown at least one camera on over 99.6% of our launches. We've also been keen on finding new and unusual ways to record video and photos of our water rockets in flight. We have invented a lot of concepts that we are very pleased to see are being emulated and expended upon by others flying rockets of all types.

We've recently announced our latest idea for a new and unique way of viewing water rockets in flight. Click on this article link to see the all new Water Rocket Chase Camera Project!

How to make your Water Rocket fly higher

We have added a new section to our website that contains the first in a series of articles which share many of the tips and tricks we have learned over the years that can help you make your water rockets go higher and/or make your water rocket go farther.

The first article in the series explains many of the weight reduction techniques which we have employed in the fabrication of the MSP430 based electronics payload and parachute deploy module of our X-12 advanced ultra high pressure water rocket. These weight reducing methods can be applied to any water rocket design to improve the performance by shedding unnecessary mass, which will cut down on the amount of wasted energy.

Accompanying the new performance tips article is a new water rocket video which shows how the new payload module is set up. The video also includes a step-by-step explanation of our water rocket arming and launch procedures, from rocket preparation through launch and landing.

Many people have been curious about what it takes to launch one of our advanced rockets, and we thought it would be a great place to show the process, because it ties in very tightly with the new reduced mass payload module. The video illustrates the very same launch procedures which were used to set most of our Water Rocket world altitude records.

Our performance tips section will be expanded over the coming weeks with additional articles and videos showing specific construction tips and launcher designs which you can use to your advantage in your own rockets.

The first article in this series is available now and can be found at the following link: http://www.uswaterrockets.com/tips/weight_saving/tip.htm