Brief:
The Sunward Flying Umbrella is a very high drag rocket that looks like, well, an umbrella and flies like one too. The "rocket" uses a parachute for recovery, but that might not really be needed. It does not go very high and it comes down slowly.

Construction:
The rocket comes with a single body tube, 8 fin struts, 8 umbrella panels, nose cone, parachute, and 24mm motor mount. The parts are laser cut and typical construction quality.

I won 2 Sunward rockets in a contest. I chose the Flying Umbrella and Khufu's Pyramid. The "rocket" construction is pretty straightforward. It is listed as a level 3 rocket and I would agree. The instructions are nice and helpful. The 8 "fins" were actually pretty easy to attach. I used Quick Dry Tacky Glue and they went on with no problem.

The umbrella panels are thin and a little fragile, but they were glued in place with little trouble. I was a little worried that they would not be strong enough, but the have survived the flights with no problem.

The shock cord might be a little short. If I had it to do over again, I would use a longer one.

There are no "gotchas" if you follow the directions.

Finishing:
The paint scheme that I chose made the finishing a little time consuming as I wanted to make the Flying Umbrella look like an umbrella. I chose red and white for the umbrella panels. I had some blue paint laying around and it was July 4th so I decided to finish the rocket red, white and blue.

It is a little hard to sand the primer coat. There are a lot of surfaces you have to sand because with 8 fins, you have 16 surfaces and there is also a top and bottom on the umbrella panels to sand.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
Everyone who had seen the Flying Umbrella said pretty much the same thing, "That is not going too high!" Everyone was correct. The motor of choice is the D12-3. The rocket struggled to get 60' in the air. It arched over and was halfway down before the ejection charge went off.

The rocket was upside down at this time and the parachute did not have time to open, however, the fall did not do any damage to the rocket. A D12-0 might be a good choice as the 3 second delay was too long.

I might try to get some D11-P motors, use a foam nosecone, and just let the umbrella float down. I might even look to use an F12 reload in the Flying Umbrella.

Recovery:
Recovery was not exactly what I expected. The rocket was upside down when the ejection charge went off and the parachute did not have time to catch any air or open.

Click here for a video of the launch.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
The Flying Umbrella is a good high drag design. It was used in a demonstration launch for some middle school kids, was fun to build, and should be the focus of attention at any launch.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5