One thing I can't figure out, why is the protector size based on the
airframe size instead of the
parachute size?
For my Excel DD, the provided 12" drogue chute is
tiny. Wrapping it in the 18x18" square protector suggested by Apogee for a 4" airframe just seems absurd (the guidance here suggests 12x12" instead, but still). In fact the chute lines are probably shorter than the diagonal for the 18" square, so I'd suspect it might not even come all the way out of the protector, or that the protector might interfere with the inflation/operation of the drogue (it would certainly be flapping right in front of it, might as well just forget about the drogue and just use the protector as a streamer
). So I re-used an extra GLR Kevlar protector I already had (
this one for the 2.6" airframe), which still easily surrounds the tiny drogue. I guess the only concern I could think of is that it might come unwrapped inside the rocket being so small, to deal with that once the shock cord comes out of the burrito I did one turn around the outside (so the shock cord helps keep the burrito together), and I did my first flight on this rocket (motor eject, main parachute only) with the drogue wrapped this way in the upper parachute bay and it was still wrapped when it landed. I wrapped the cord once around the 18x18" protector for the 40" main the same way and it deployed just fine (and this is what I've done on my other rockets as well without issue, I generally try to help ensure that as the shock cord extends it will help open the burrito up from the inside by having an extra fold of cord inside the wrap, etc).
So is all the extra protector material simply to fill the airframe, or based on an assumption that larger airframe diameters means larger chutes and this doesn't apply to the drogue, or...?
