Recovery Coupler
This was actually the second try at getting this recovery system to work the first time I estimated the distance the rocket would go up and cut a string to that length then anchored one end to the lanucher and tied the other end to a piece of paper seperating two contacts. Theoretically when the rocket launched and reached its apogee (highest point in the air where the rocket changes from going up and starts coming down) the string would pull tight, pulling the peice of paper out of between the contacts, completeing the circuit to the igniter igniting the flamable vapor seperating a two piece bottle blowing the parachute and nose cone out delpoying the parachute. It didn't quite happen the way I planned granted it wasn't the best idea. It would have worked though if the thrust of the rocket at liftoff didn't push the main bottle up breaking the wire going down to the contacts. Oh well it was worth a try.
Anyway this is a picture of the second try. Sorry I know the picture isn't that good. This time I decided to use a on board timer. The circut was built around a 555 timer and worked perfictly but couldn't hold the current of a dead short from the igniter. So I put a 2N5088 transistor on the end to boost power handling. It still didn't work and by this time I was thinking of other ways to do it. I tried relays on top of that because the transistor couldn't cut it either, but it would mean I would have to put on more batteries. That would add weight to the rocket which was to heavy as it was. So I gave that up and started on a different idea in my
Recovery 2 Page.
