The New Year's Eve Parachute

The Thrifty Rocketeer continues...

An amusing follow up to my earlier blog entry about umbrella parachutes.

Just yesterday, as I was driving into work, I passed something on the roadway as I hit the entrance ramp to the expressway.

This is the same location where I stumbled across a crushed Alpha II rocket several months ago. (It was pretty trashed, but someone had written "Have a Nice Day" on the nosecone. But that's another story.)


I'm not sure why I noticed the aqua-blue material along the roadway, but something registered in the back of my mind.   I made a mental note and hoped it would be there on the way back, cause I was already up to 40 mph and accelerating in traffic up to the highway.

Sure enough, coming back after midnight, I took the exit ramp, turned onto the shoulder and slowly inched toward the entrance point.  There it was.

I turned on the flashers and trotted along the berm of the deserted roadway to where it was pinned in my headlights.  I picked it up and noted it was a soaked, collapsed umbrella.  I gave it a shake, and tucked it under my arm, returning to my car, setting it down on the floorboard and drove home.

I immediately walked it into the bathroom and opened the umbrella up. It was a smart aqua blue color and looked to be in perfect shape, except for an awful lot of grit and sand that coated it.  I had guessed that it was there more than 24 hours before I ever saw it.  We had just had two days of rain, and escaped flooding over the weekend after Xmas.

I opened it up and ran the shower, rinsing the grit and sand off. As I spun the umbrella, it became clear that at least two spokes were busted and given the brake in the metal, it couldn't be repaired.

I set the umbrella down to dry in the tub, and walked into my wife's sewing room. I plucked the seam ripper from her table and returned to the bathroom.  "I see you've found another broken umbrella," my wife stated matter-of-factly from behind me.  It was not a question.  She had already seen it in the tub.

"I'm not sure yet," I lied as I sat down on the couch with the umbrella up and the seam-ripper tool poised to start freeing the fabric from the ribs.  One minute later, I was sure. The broken ribs were trash.  But the fabric was amazingly intact.

About five minutes later, I had the fabric free, except for the apex, where it was secured by an aqua blue plastic cap.  I got a pair of side-cutters and freed the ribs with a single snip of the wire the secured it to the shaft.  Trying to free the cap, I spotted what looked to be a single brad nail and pulled it with the side-cutters.  
SPROING, the  center shaft flew apart and shot the handle past my belly into the couch arm.  I laughed despite myself, caught off-guard by the explosive decompression.

A moment later, I had the cap popped and the fabric was totally free from the skeleton.  I trashed the ribs, handle and the spokes, and laid the fabric flat.  It was blemish free, eight panels and laid almost perfectly flat.

Now, in earlier versions, I always found one or two panels that were ripped or poked, and candidates for removal.  But not this one. It was in GOOD shape.  Immediately, I started visualizing an eight shroud line chute, instead of the standard six shroud lines. I left the fabric to dry and went to bed.

In the morning, I folded the aqua-blue fabric up  like a taco, and secured it with the original black Velcro strap.  "Misty Harbor" is the name of the strap, that will have to come off eventually.  It looked like a quality unit when I first saw it, and I'm eager to try it out.

Now I have to find the right-sized rocket to make to try it out on.

Happy New Year and good hunting!

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