Best way to get a 12 inch parachute out of a 18mm tube?

[Sterk03]

What is the best way or most reliable way to pack a 12inch chute into a 18mm tube and getting it to come out easily without getting stuck. I have used some wax paper around the chute at times but then sometimes it just jams it.

Same thing for a 18inch chute out of a 24mm tube.

Thanks

Sterk03

 

[dhbarr]

Have more length. That's a lot of laundry for such a skinny bird, are you sure it won't stay on orbit?

 

[Voyager1]

Have more length. That's a lot of laundry for such a skinny bird, are you sure it won't stay on orbit?

Agreed!
Have you simmed it to get an estimate of the final velocity with that chute? You want about 5-6 m/s.
You could use a little talcum powder.

 

[caveduck]

Making your own parachutes instead of using the stock Estes ones will also help. The modern Estes chutes are super thick (around 1.7 mils) due to CPSC suffocation hazard rules. That is so thick that they don't pack or deploy well due to stiffness. If you get some 0.8 mil ("80 gauge") cleaner bags and use nylon fishing thread lines taped down with 1-2 mil mylar or kapton tape, you can deploy an 18" chute out of a BT-20 with no problem.

 

[crossfire]

Buy a Par12 thin mill fabric from Top Flight Recovery.

 

[mh9162013]

What @caveduck said: make your own. There's almost no way you're getting a 12" nylon or a stock 12" parachute from Estes to reliably eject from a BT-20 tube.

Making a 12" parachute out of HDPE or Mylar (think grocery bags and space blankets) is a place to start. I know I can EASILY get a 9" hexagonal parachute made from grocery bags in my BT-20 rockets (which is overkill, btw), so getting 12" is probably doable.

That being said: why do you need such a big parachute in such a small rocket? Even the Estes Mini Mean Machine, which is a BT-20 rocket that's about a meter long uses a 9" parachute.

 

[mh9162013]

To add on to what I already said above, check out this video:



After watching that video, you might see that in certain unique situations, it might be possible to get a 12 inch stock Estes parachute to fit (and eject) from a BT-20 tube. But again, I don't think it would be a reliable recovery system, especially in cold weather.

 

[Alan15578]

Making your own parachutes instead of using the stock Estes ones will also help. The modern Estes chutes are super thick (around 1.7 mils) due to CPSC suffocation hazard rules. That is so thick that they don't pack or deploy well due to stiffness. If you get some 0.8 mil ("80 gauge") cleaner bags and use nylon fishing thread lines taped down with 1-2 mil mylar or kapton tape, you can deploy an 18" chute out of a BT-20 with no problem.

Yikes. I have not built a newish Estes kit in decades. I used to fly parachute duration with a 24" parachute in a BT-5, reliably. I could do 30", but not reliably. I've done 56" from BT-50. This was with 1/4 mill aluminized mylar. I've deployed such chutes packed for over a year. Powder once and fold carefully. I am not saying that could never get a modern Estes chute to work, but I'd rather fly garbage and plastic supermarket bags.

 

[Hobie1dog]

sounds like way too big of a parachute but as my old rocket friend says, " they only put those big parachutes in there to compensate for people who are shooting them off in parking lots and landing on asphalt"

 

[GlenP]

Cut the chute into strips 1” wide and tape them together, ie - make a streamer.