It seems like the shock cord is so twisted up that it gets shorter and pulls the chute close to the transition and that may be what prevents it from catching air.
I would move the chute to about 2 ft from the transition and add a ball bearing swivel to the fin can so it can spin without twisting up the shock cord. Then when the JLCR lets go, the chute will be further from the upper section, it should catch air and open without a problem.
Yup, what he said. Change your configuration and I bet the problem will go away. Weirdest chute behavior I've ever seen besides the usual Hail Mary recoveries where the main chute hangs in the tube and pulls out just before the crash to
save the rocket is a USR Banshee I made into a long neck rocket with an MAWD dual deploy. The configuration was such that with drogue deployment, the rocket glided down aft end first dragging the upper bay and the 12" drogue behind it.
It would circle down, climb a bit, stall and would repeat the cycle till it hit the main deployment altitude. The main would blow horizontally many times and the whole thing would swing down like a pendulum. The configuration was just so, so it
flew this way every flight. Had a motor failure that took that rocket down so I built another. I was hoping it would do that same thing but expected it wouldn't. It doesn't.
A one time event was with the mid power Apogee Rising Star rocket. It was 10 years ago and I used the stock plastic chute. I launched it way up there on I believe an F motor and the apogee event occurred. That thing was coming down fast and I was
asked if the rocket was "dual deploy"? It looked like the chute had streamered but it didn't appear to have torn lines. Rocket body was below the chute. As it got lower, it appeared the body of the chute was puffed out a bit but the open end was constricted. I did not use a reefing ring as I didn't know what that was back then. The chute then gently billowed open perhaps around 500 feet and I didn't have much of a walk to recover it. When I inspected it, nothing. No burn holes, torn lines
(remember it was a stock plastic chute) or any damage whatsoever. It was sweatshirt weather too so it wasn't unduly cold.
Only thing I could figure is the conditions were just right that the end of the chute was "held" closed a bit by the airflow going up and around the canopy. The canopy lines were stretched with the sustainer underneath. I noted as it got lower, the canopy quivered and then opened up the rest of the way gently.
I'll take it. It was a "natural" dual event process that was interesting to witness. Now that behavior was never seen again with that rocket. I suspect that perhaps a gentle horizontal gust of wind pertabated the the system that disrupted the canopy to open.
Stupidhead here suggest not to put the chute release
AROUND the chute protector. Do something like duct tape to hold the protector in more or less one place once threaded on the harness. or knot the protector on the harness so once it's blown out into the breeze, the JLCRchute pack is totally clear from the protector. Heck, once the charge goes off, you don't need the protector anymore. Why do it this way? If you wrap the band around the
chute protector, a lot of the nomex protectors are stiff. I tried it once and the chute never made it out of the crinkled, stiff protector even though the band was released.
I used to "attach" a length of kevlar thread to a chute protector and put a loop on the end of the thread and then thread that on the harness.
I stopped that a long time ago, even before the JLCR 'cause the only thing that kevlar thread leader did was wrap around and tangle everything else. Just open up the button hole on the "store" bought protectors and thread them on
your harness.
Look at Mr. Bean's video at his store, you can't go wrong with his method. Kurt