Military Surplus 6' Parachute

Anyone have experience with these parachutes? Unusual shape/design, and it comes with a deployment bag. Seems like a decent deal for $30 and a well built canopy, and "advertised" for a 10 lb weight.

Google research from the pn# seems to indicate that they for some kind of 2000lb Vietnam-era naval bomb/mine. Not sure how to predict what load/descent rate they could handle - CD could be something interesting to predict with this odd of a shape.

Looking to put it in a 4" airframe.

https://www.armynavysales.com/6-ft-parachute-par6-340.html

https://aeroconsystems.com/cart/all-parachutes/72-inch-orange-parachute/

Doesn't come with the drogue shown in the photo.

If it’s the same one I got the picture in the water shows the best use for it.
Severely overbuilt for rocket use and quite heavy.
Would possibly be suitable for a drogue chute in a really large build.

vance2loud said:

If it’s the same one I got the picture in the water shows the best use for it.
Severely overbuilt for rocket use and quite heavy.
Would possibly be suitable for a drogue chute in a really large build.

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If it's designed for a 2000lb bomb in free fall, I'd certainly believe that.

I'm assuming that if I could fit it within a 4" airframe and get it to deploy reliably, it might work as a main though. Not looking to push altitude records on an L3 cert attempt, so my thinking is that adding weight via a heavier parachute is one of the "safer" places in terms of CG location and airframe landing impact weight to put it.

Mark 84 was a 2000 pound military free fall pound dumb bomb. The military had drogue chutes to slow the projectile down for low flying aircraft when dropping low to ground so bomb blast wouldn’t hurt friendly planes. I guess it’ll work on a rocket. Might fall a little faster or slower than you want it too.

Your taking a specialized piece of equipment and trying to reuse it lol.

Andrew_ASC said:

Mark 84 was a 2000 pound military free fall pound dumb bomb. The military had drogue chutes to slow the projectile down for low flying aircraft when dropping low to ground so bomb blast wouldn’t hurt friendly planes. I guess it’ll work on a rocket. Might fall a little faster or slower than you want it too.

Your taking a specialized piece of equipment and trying to reuse it lol.

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Thanks for the background. You're right - I would certainly want to test it and measure descent/deployment performance with a smaller motor/altitude/weight before letting it rip with an "M".

Steer clear of this for a L-3, in a 4 inch rocket, it's very bulky & will be difficult to repack.
Stick with a simpler chute nomex/bag combo for your L-3.
Save that beast for a larger airframe , you got enough to worry about without complicating matters unnecessarily, I know the price is tempting, but I believe you would be surprised at how bulky/unwieldy this chute is.

The fact it can be used as a 2000lb. bomb drogue, or sea anchor for boats weighting several thousand pounds should be the "tell".

Thanks for the feedback - I agree, I'm concerned about whether it would deploy/inflate if it's as heavily built as it claims, even if it was packagable into the airframe.

Y'all might be talking me out trying it on a L3 attempt, but I still might be tempted to try to give it a go as an entertaining experiment in a lower priority flight/airframe (fortunately, my past builds have been almost as heavily built as this parachute, so they could probably better survive a faster landing if the parachute doesn't live up to expectations).

I added the description from Aerocon to the top post to keep it all together for future reference. It is interesting that they rate it for a 10lb payload - I wonder if it's ever been flown with a rocket that size. I don't imagine many of the large diameter / longer rockets that could easily hold an overbuilt chute like this would also weigh 10lbs.

Would look really cool coming down, though.

I used one of these on my L-3 for the 15 lb nose cone with a 6in airframe. If I remember correctly, it took as much space as the TAC-9 chute I used for the rest of the rocket.

AdAstraPerAspera said:

I used one of these on my L-3 for the 15 lb nose cone with a 6in airframe. If I remember correctly, it took as much space as the TAC-9 chute I used for the rest of the rocket.

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It's good to know that even if it's huge, it's able to deploy/inflate with a 15lb load.

Any chance you were able to pull a rough descent rate from that nosecone? Would help me back out the measured CD for calculation purposes.

I bought one a few years ago for a 6" rocket. It is bulky and also heavy! I wouldn't use it for anything less than 5"
NikeMikey

Gary Mac said:

It's good to know that even if it's huge, it's able to deploy/inflate with a 15lb load.

Any chance you were able to pull a rough descent rate from that nosecone? Would help me back out the measured CD for calculation purposes.

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Sorry, no decent rate. It came out at low altitude at the same time as the main and carried no electronics.

I use one in Fat Daddy, which weighs in at 10.3 pounds. The few times it has flown properly, the chute has performed well. I had an early deployment, potentially while still under boost, it did not fail.
The chute alone, without deployment bag weighs in at 1 kilo. It packs comfortably in a 4 inch length of 7.5 inch LOC tube. I don't think I would attempt to force it into a 4" tube 7.5" long.

T-Rex said:

I use one in Fat Daddy, which weighs in at 10.3 pounds. The few times it has flown properly, the chute has performed well. I had an early deployment, potentially while still under boost, it did not fail.
The chute alone, without deployment bag weighs in at 1 kilo. It packs comfortably in a 4 inch length of 7.5 inch LOC tube. I don't think I would attempt to force it into a 4" tube 7.5" long.

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From these numbers you would need about 15" of 4" tubing to hold it.

AdAstraPerAspera said:

From these numbers you would need about 15" of 4" tubing to hold it.

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I have a length of 4" tube, I'll see if I can pack it in, with a blanket, and see how it goes.....