Final Launch !

Today was our final launch, me and melody fortunately achieved the launch time by getting a final launch time of 10.4 sec. The weather today was not exactly launching conditions, it was cold, rainy, and windy. The wind I think definitely impacted the time that we got for our final launch, because when our parachute deployed, the wind helped keep the rocket afloat in the air for a longer time. At first, we got launch time of 6 sec, but then we found the problem. We cut slits in the nose cone so that the air could blow the cone off so that the parachute could deploy, because the problem with our launched was that the parachute didn't deploy because the cone wouldn't come off in flight. We cut slits in the cone, and we   taped the cone to the bottle very lightly, we also tied a string connecting the cone to the bottle so that when it comes off, we wouldn't lose it in the process of the launch. When we solved this problem, we found it to be much for effective, because we got the time we wanted. We also used a suggestion from this article http://www.pack530.org/PDF%20FILES/Building%20A%20P-530%20Rocket.pdf on how to fold the parachute so that it could deploy correctly. "Grab the chute between two fingers, in the center, and pull it up toward the ceiling. Let the chute fold naturally as you lift it. Once you have the chute pulled up, fold it once in half at the center. You don't want to fold the chute too tightly but you can fold your chute into thirds if space is a factor. Wrap the excess string loosely around the chute. Fold the straw armature sections onto the chute but not part of the excess string wrap." We found this to be very effective, because our parachute deployed correctly. Today was a success (: