Recovery Canisters

When I built the Bullet, I went with a common canister for storing the recovery charges: a PVC cap attached to the AV bay. Now that I've watched many people prep for flights, I've decided to switch to these Polyethylene tubing-based canisters. I'm hoping to do ground tests tomorrow for separation for main chute deployment so I made some canisters today.

In the pictures above, you can see the first couple steps I use. Since the glue takes a moment to set and the ROL article is light on details on technique, I decided to record my steps for future reference. I found it easiest to put a partial ring of glue around the bottom before involving the e-match. There would be just a little gap open to get the e-match in. After the partial ring set, I put the e-match in and put just a small drop of glue in to hold the match and then let that set. Finally, I'd put in the final bit of glue and fill it out at the bottom.

The reason for the multiple steps was that putting too much glue in at once made it too difficult to manage the e-match. For the separation tests tomorrow, I'll need to add 3g of black powder to the canister and cap it with masking tape but the hard part is done now.