On the 16th of June Steve Moores posted to the newsgroup uk.tech.rocketry about a source for some mil-spec 9' parachutes that he'd found. Since I've got a couple of large projects on the go I thought I check them out as buying big PML chutes or importing Rocketman chutes is quite expensive.

After emailing Steve to get more details about these chutes I phoned the company who were selling them and placed an order. The chap I talked to on the phone was very pleasant and explained what they had in stock. Evidently they also carry 22' chutes and occasionally 32' chutes, however all the shroud lines have been cut. He also said they could order 90' chutes, yes that's 90', but they are quite expensive at around £250 and again all the lines are cut.

It took about a week for the package to arrive at my work, there's no way this thing was going through the letterbox. After looking at the receipt that came with the packages I paid a total of £22 for two 9' parachutes and the postage & packing. Not bad really when you consider that a 6' PML parachute will cost you £81 here in the UK.

So what do you get? Well they come in a rather fetching green drab coloured nylon deployment bag that is absolutely stuffed to bursting point with the two chutes. It's got loads of white tape stitched onto it and a lacing system of sorts over a folded flap that runs the length of the bag. At the bottom end there is a set of ties and a bit of para-cord sealing this end up, there are also four attachment points for what I presume would be the drogue chute.

Down at the front end there is a pull pin that is stopping a bit of para-cord from releasing, the para-cord is closing the front access. Presumably they would remove the pin just before flinging the bag out of a plane with a drogue attached. After pulling the pin out and opening the flap you are presented with a view of all the suspension lines.

There's a flap of material joined to the bag that has a row of hoops on either side of it, the suspension lines are neatly folded through the hoops and finally through a couple of hoops that shut a flap over the parachutes. This flap is to keep the chutes in the bag until the suspension lines are taught and thus reduce the shock loading when the chutes open.

Both chutes are attached to a bit of nylon strap that is backed up with a metal chain. Each parachute has a ring at the bottom of the suspension lines and the nylon strap is bartacked through these rings. This means that unless you want to recover your rockets with both chutes all the time you need to cut this bit of nylon off. The metal chain is easily removed as it uses split rings to anchor it's self so it's just a matter of removing those.

If you've got a big project that could use dual 9' chutes as the main recovery device then I'd be tempted to leave the chutes in the bag without disturbing the suspension lines. You should be able to attach a drogue to the bag and to an attachment point on the top of one of the parachutes with out too much trouble. This would then fit in quite a small space when compared with a similar set up.

Not having a project big enough to warrant dual 9' chutes I decided to try and remove one of the chutes to have a look at it. Unfortunately due to the fact that both chutes are joined by the nylon strap at the bottom and the fact that they seem to have been vacuum bagged into the deployment bag, it's impossible to remove one without the other. So I just pulled on the nylon strap and all the suspension lines came out from their loops and eventually the parachutes popped out.

If you've ever seen the big parachute that MARS used when they recovered Kev Stick Bullet and Primary Koncern then you'll already know what these chutes look like, except they are smaller. I don't know exactly what they are made from, it could be either some sort of silk or some sort of nylon, either way they are made from a lightweight white material.

There are 18 suspension lines that are made from para-cord, which are sewn into the parachute at the top and bottom of the canopy. There are actually nine bits of cord, but since they form a loop around the parachute there ends up being 18 lines. The lines are in the region of 99"-102" long and are sewn together at the top of the chute in the ~15" diameter spill hole.

So by now you'll want to know where you can get hold of these chutes, as the price is definitely right for what they are. I don't know how many they've got and I don't know what their supply is like so you might want to phone them and make sure they still have some. So the contact details are:

If you use RockSim to design your rockets then you can use the following file to add these parachutes to your database of components. Create a directory called new in the RockSim/data directory and save this file in it. Then simply restart RockSim and it will pick up the new components.

• RockSim parachute update - pcdata.csv

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Last update: Tuesday, 30-Mar-2004 03:47:16 EST