Use of drag chutes

Originally Posted by

I tried to use the tail chute twice in my H-301 Libelle. First time was during an off field landing, I pulled the chute and stuffed the nose down...........next thing I knew I was scooting through the weeds doing 80. The chute hadn't deployed! Next time I gave it a try was a landing at Winnemucca, Nv. I popped the chute on down-wind and soon found I was going to be way short, so I pulled the jettison handle..............you guessed it, it didn't jettison! I made the runway, but was a half mile from my desired stopping point. The chute worked fine on the ground, before and after both incidents. My conclusion, unreliable and not necessary in a ship that had landing flaps and dive brakes.
FWIW,
JJ

I used the Janus chute on most landings to be really familiar with it's characteristics/quirks before I ever got to use it in an outlanding situation.

I only ever suffered 2 failures and both were at my home field. Once I ran the lever forward through the detent and inadvertently jettisoned it lol, and the second time was deploying it while dumping water and it not surprisingly it didn't inflate properly. Both good lessons learnt cheaply

:-) Colin