(Week 13&14) The ins-n-outs of Folding a Drone Parachute

Launching UAV's is optional, returning to the ground is mandatory. Its all about how fast you return to the ground that is important. Most of us in primary school went through the science experiment where you drop an uncooked egg from a certain height, where the goal is to protect the egg from cracking on impact. Some would have you wrap the egg in bubble wrap or build a housing that will essentially lessen the momentum by increasing or lengthening the impulse. Those physics principles are behind how a parachute works. Which is important to understand as the "parachute" is the only recovery method for the Bramor PPX. Being the only recovery method, it is extremely important that the parachute works like its supposed to every time. To ensure that happens for this class and future classes, I have created a training video for the correct method of folding and packing the parachute for the C-Astral Bramor ppx.

Currently there is a great deal of research being conducted by the FAA on the dangers and severity of sUAV's falling out of the sky. This research points out the rather obvious fact that when you slow the velocity of the UAV to the ground, then the severity drops in turn. The report further states that parachutes could be used as a means to slow down the velocity. By adding a parachute, some drone operators will be able to get a waiver from the FAA for the flight over people restriction that is currently in place under 14 CFR part 107. Lucky for us, the Bramor already has a parachute, (picture to the right). Having a parachute is only half the battle, the other half is making sure the parachute is fully functional and deploys as planned, every time.

This training video serves as a tool to use for folding and packing the Bramors' parachute. My hope is that future classes will use it as a supplemental training aid to be used in conjugation with the Technical Manual (TM). It took more than a dozen folds to get the procedure down, and many more to become proficient at it. This training video may help to reduce the time to learn the techniques required for a good fold. Time is very important as it is limited by the duration of the semester. Which is further limited by the amount of available optimal flying days due to weather restrictions in Indiana. Meaning it is very important the fall semester learns the operations of the Bramor and its parachute faster than in the spring, since the bulk of good flying days are front loaded in the fall semester.

Training Video Build

Folding Practice

The process for the creation of a parachute training video stared with first becoming proficient at packing the parachute. Multiple folds were conducted by Todd H. and I.

Once we were proficient, then we recorded the folding process. Next I took the recorded video and cut and trimmed the extra time out using Windows Movie Maker. The video edition software is no longer supported by Microsoft and still has some bugs and compatibility issues. It did not have very many fancy editor tools, but it was free and did the job. Hopefully in the future, Purdue will offer Adobe editor suite , or similar, to students as it is not offered at the time of this writing. Using the Microsoft editor, I was able to rearrange the video "snips" into the correct order. (Can be seen by going through slide show below).

Once they were organized, I cut and built slides of important information from the TM using PowerPoint. They when then placed throughout the video to highlight important aspects of the folding process. Once all the snips and slides were in place. I adjusted the time. The timing was adjusted mostly for convenience and duration. With the playback time set to 8x and 16x playback speeds, the video would have been 40 minutes long.

Trimming unneeded time from original video snips

With the adjusted time, the video is just over 7 minutes, making it short enough to upload to Youtube.

After receiving feedback about the video, I added text instructions and techniques that will assist the viewing with the fold. The problem with the text was the free editing software does not give a lot of options for adding text .

Using the parachute as a background for text

Improvising became the biggest tool and I used the "white space" of the parachute to inter the text. This made the text readable and gave it a background to contrast against. Once the video was produced and text was added, only a few changes to the final product came from the feedback stage. Emphasis was requested to be placed on ensuring the suspension lines don't get tangled. To accomplish this all I had to do was reopen the software, record and clip in the new footage to the original video. One issue that came from this was the timing of the soundtrack. Again the free level of the software diminishes the user interface. After some pain and heartache, the new clip was integrated and a final product was almost complete.

Training materials traditionally have the tendency to be boring. In an attempt to relieve some of the boredom, the classes unofficial them song was added as the soundtrack. Its an uplifting tune from the fantasy series, "Star Wars". I think the addition of music will add to the quality of the video and not distract from the learning outcome. Near the end of the training video, there is an important moment where i highlight the importance of caring for the parachute in and out of the parachute storage bag. Again it was an attempt to highlight the significance of the parachute fold and alleviate the boring nature of a training video. The slide show below show shows the building process for the training video.