Altimeter Bay Pics

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Steve,

I had my power on-off slide switch for the tracker in the nosecone of a dual deploy rocket get turned off during a flight. I wasn't a big deal since it didn't happen until until the main chute deployed at 1000 feet. It had flown this configuration several times before without issue but this time something managed to slide the switch.

My solution was to take my Dremel tool and cut down the slide part of the switch until about 1/8" was left. There is now no way anything will accidentally trip the switch but I can still work it easily even with my fat fingers. Just a thought.

View attachment 311423

Terry

Thanks, Terry. That's very interesting. The nosecone would be a very stressful location for a slide switch. I think Fred's solution of mounting slide switches sideways would be appropriate there. When the nosecone hits the end of the shock cord it probably experiences very high gee forces. Plus there's the shock cord possibly catching on the handle as Jim and you mentioned. Cutting down the handle reduces both the mass of the handle which gee forces could affect as well as the possibility of a strap hooking on it.



Steve Shannon
 
Thanks, Terry. That's very interesting. The nosecone would be a very stressful location for a slide switch. I think Fred's solution of mounting slide switches sideways would be appropriate there. When the nosecone hits the end of the shock cord it probably experiences very high gee forces. Plus there's the shock cord possibly catching on the handle as Jim and you mentioned. Cutting down the handle reduces both the mass of the handle which gee forces could affect as well as the possibility of a strap hooking on it.



Steve Shannon

Steve,

Your point about slide switches in the nosecone is well taken. I destroyed several before "switching" to a different switch. Just thought that cutting down the handles on yours might save you from rebuilding the ebay on that rocket.

Terry
 
Steve,

Your point about slide switches in the nosecone is well taken. I destroyed several before "switching" to a different switch. Just thought that cutting down the handles on yours might save you from rebuilding the ebay on that rocket.

Terry

I appreciate it. It's not much of a change. It's really just unscrewing the screws which hold the switches in place, moving them inside with the handle poking out of the hole, and then putting small machine screws through the wall of the switchband with nuts inside. It'll be a lot nicer installation when I'm done. It'll be a few weeks, but I'll post a picture.


Steve Shannon
 
I for one appreciate whoever resurrected this thread.
I also appreciate the “spirited” discussions by everyone as I find it helps me understand better what is being discussed. My thanks to all participants.
In particular I find FredA’s contributions very helpful. He shared particular part sources and part numbers as well as his implemented risk philosophy. I doubt I will ever launch a rocket of Fred’s size/cost but my “investments” (LOL!) in rocketry continue to grow. So for me risk is associated with safety, cost & effort I put into a rocket. The higher the cost/effort the less risk I want to take in getting a damaged rocket back from a flight or worse, missing. For an inexpensive rocket that doesn’t fly very high I’ll take more risk.

Lot’s of good info in this thread to help me make decisions.


As for AvBay designs, my L3 certification AvBay pics are shown. The L3 final configuration may not have been exactly as shown. To solve prior problems with AvBays I use balsa blocks faced with FG for my rockets. My L3 certification flight included the primary Raven3/Power Perch with magnetic switch. And for redundancy a screw switch connected to an EasyMini per their hookup instructions. Once the altimeters are wired and the AvBay lids are installed, the ematches are wired independently. Makes prep much easier. Only issue I have is that the BRB GPS has to be turned on prior to installation.

StanO

View attachment 311519View attachment 311520View attachment 311521View attachment 311522
 
Basically, if there is a facility of your receive end to send the incoming NMEA strings out to another device you would be able to get it displayed on a map live. You mentioned a 7dB patch antenna so the system is on 2.4Ghz?
If that is the case, for really out of sight flights one is able to take quick looks at a map and keep the patch antenna pointed at the rocket for maximum data recovery. Done that with 900Mhz NMEA trackers using a patch antenna and it really helps in
receiving and decoding more positions on the map. It's really funky with a rocket that goes out of sight, is not seen period, you got the patch pointed in the proper direction and still get valid positions when it's down. Even if you didn't see it land.

Nice setup. Kurt
Thanks. Sorry for my delayed response...flu has me moving slowly.

Yeah, the patch is on the ground station side of things and everything is 2.4GHz. By the time it gets to the ground station, it's not an NMEA stream any more. However, it wouldn't be tough to write a map application to process its stream - or write one to convert the stream back to NMEA.

One nice thing about the Taranis (the radio I use as the ground station) is that it shows signal strength (RSSI) to you and can even read it out in voice if you'd like. I programmed it so that when I flip a momentary switch, it reads RSSI. It's really easy to DF when it's telling you RSSI exactly when you want it. The patch still has a pretty wide beamwidth, so it's pretty easy to keep a signal.
 
Here's a almost finished 38mm Altimeter bay for my Madcow FG Mini-Frenzy dual deploy, with an Eggtimer Quantum and 300mah 2S Lipo.

MiniFrenzyXLdd24.jpg MiniFrenzyXLdd25.jpg MiniFrenzyXLdd26.jpg
 
Where's yer on/off switch Rich?:wink: (Me facetiously says) If it's safe for a small rocket why not a dual altimetered L3 level one? Kurt

😆 I'm taking the designers word that his system is safe if used as intended.
Adding a mechanical switch in a Alt-bay this size would be a bit tougher than normal, doable, but a PITA none the less.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top