Recently my dad and I bought a water rocket kit with a parachute recovery system. We bought the kit because we wanted to see if their parachute recovery system worked and if so how. We assembled and tested it. The results, the parachute deployed, but except for the first launch, it deployed prematurely each time. Later we watched the videos of the launches and discovered that the rocket curved a lot as it was taking off. We think this might have caused the nose cone to fall off and deploy the parachute prematurely. To fix this we put larger fins on the rocket and made sure that they were aligned perfectly. My dad came up with a new way of putting the fins on and I will describe that later in another page. We hope the changes that we have made to the rocket will help the nosecone stay on so the parachute isn't deployed prematurely.

Below are some video clips of the launches.

click here to play Red Hawk video

On Sunday September 19, my dad and I launched off our improved Red Hawk. Our new version had bigger fins, that were aligned perfectly. We did four launches. The last launch was the best. The rocket took off and flew about two hundred feet. The rocket began to curve over. We weren't sure if the parachute was going to deploy. The parachute deployed and the rocket slowling descened on it's parachute back to earth. The duration of the flight was approximently 10 seconds. About 3 seconds up and 7 seconds down.

Red Hawk landed in bush

Clck on picture to enlarge