Here’s an update. I bought an 84” Spherachute. It’s a great looking Chute, and I knew it might be oversized, but I could reef it if necessary, or use a chute release.
I took the Warlock and the new Spherachute and the old standard 58” flat chute to LDRS. I did my L2 cert attempt with the Warlock while I was there. Unfortunately, it was a bit windy and there was a nearby wheat field where people were losing rockets, so I wanted to bring the rocket down nearby. That meant either using the new chute and reefing it, which I didn’t want to do, because I had never used the chute before, and wasn’t sure how much to reef it. Or using the new chute with a chute release, which it didn’t want to do in case of chute release failure. Or using the stock chute, which is what I decided to do.
The rocket did what it has it has always done on that chute. Descended too quickly and swung back and forth and around in a spiraling circle the whole way down. It hit the ground swinging quickly, and tore one of the Loc-n-tab fins right out through the cardboard! Cert fail!
I took the rocket back back to my table and did emergency field surgery on the rocket with some 30-minute epoxy, and put some fat epoxy fillets on that fin.
The next day was the I motor Monkey Loft. Sims showed my rocket going only 1,000 feet or so, so I wasn’t worried about drift, and I used the new 84” Spherachute. That chute is really beautiful! The hemispherical chute is also much more stable than the flat chutes, and the rocket hung still below the chute with no swinging. But it’s also definitely oversized. At times, it seemed like the rocket just hung there in the air, not descending at all. I should have got a 72”.
The next day, I used the 84” chute on my Comet rocket’s maiden flight. This rocket is 8oz lighter than the Warlock, so it’s pretty close. I decided to reef the lines a bit by tying then off by maybe 15” above the swivel. The chute seemed to take forever to unfurl after the ejection charge, and I did have a minor heart attack. But it opened eventually, and brought the rocket down very gently. This rocket has long, pointy fins that extend below the rocket, so a gentle landing is important. Worked great! But I think this rocket would do better with a 72” hemispherical.
Later that day, I did another monkey loft using the 84”. The chute did well, but I still got a small crack in one of the wood glue fillets. It was mostly just a paint crack, but I wanted to do another L2 attempt the next day, so I dug out the fillet, and made another fat epoxy fillet. I’m probably going to do that with all the wood glue fillets.
The next day was my second L2 attempt. It was very gusty, and I didn’t want to drift into the wheat on an ultra-slow descent from apogee. But I also didn’t want to land hard on the stock chute. And I didn’t want to reef the lines on the Spherachute, in case that’s what caused the delay in the chute unfurling on the flight of the Comet. So I tried the final option — 84” Spherachute, with Chute Release at 700’. Success! The chute release opened, the big, beautiful Spherachute opened, and the Warlock settled gently to the plowed field several hundred yards short of the wheat.
So, lessons learned. The stock Warlock chute tends to oscillate and gyrate and descend too,quickly. An 84” Spherachute is much more stable, but descends a bit too slow, and probably a 72” would be better. The Chute Release mitigates the 84” chute’s drift. The Warlock Loc-n-tab design allows a lot of flex, and a hard landing can apply a lot of torque with no lever arm on the inside to resist it, so epoxy fillets are probably a good idea.
