How to get rockets and other things down when they get stuck in a tree!

Last fall, when we were hurriedly conducting some final experiments and recording some video from our onboard Mobius 1080P Tower Camera before the winter, our Water Rocket became stuck in a tall tree. The rocket, which was made from a large number of 1.5 liter bottles spliced together, contained 3 onboard cameras and an experimental payload and one of our DIY homebrew parachute deploying altimeters which had custom firmware with some new features in it.

We thought that with the increased popularity of multirotors and model rockets, that there would be a lot of people who could benefit from our years of experience in how to safely recover things which get stuck in trees.

We really wanted this expensive rocket and all of the video and experimental test data which it had collected back, so we attempted several methods for recovering the rocket. We threw things at it to try and dislodge it, we tried to toss a rope over it, but it was too high to reach. We had to drive all the way home and bring back our Tree Recovery System. This device was created about 10 years ago when our World Record Setting X-10 Water Rocket got stuck in a tree.

In our latest tutorial, we show you how we built this device and how you use it to recover things that come stuck in trees. Check out the links to the web tutorial, and watch the online video we posted to YouTube, which we link to below.