Book Description

An investigation has been conducted to determine the deployment, dynamic stability, and control characteristics of a parawing-rocket booster model using a radio-controlled free-flight technique. The parawing utilized folded rigid members. The results show that this deployment technique provides consistent transitions from essentially vertical descent at subsonic speeds with the parawing stowed on the booster to normal trimmed gliding flight with the parawing deployed. For the particular deployment configuration selected, a small drogue parachute was needed to hold the parawing away from the booster during deployment until the parawing was developing lift properly. In general, the flight characteristics of the model were fairly satisfactory for an unmanned vehicle although the model had a small constant-amplitude Dutch roll oscillation and some undesirable characteristics at the stall. The model was controllable by center-of-gravity movement but the response of the model appeared to be sluggish.