The metal tipped NC is not a problem. Carbon fiber and metallic paints are a problem with Rf trackers. The degree of attenuation depends upon power output and the frequency of the tracker. The best bet is "Ask the man/woman who owns one" and perhaps one will pipe up with tracking solutions for the 2.6" Tomach . Off hand it looks like the nosecone would comfortably hold an Altus Metrum TeleGPS but it's $200.00 and you'll need the Tech license and an APRS receiver or spend the $155.00 for the TeleBT. which BTW would be cheaper than a full bore Ham APRS receiver. That is if you already had an Android device to run the AltusDroid app. Pair it with the TeleBT and you're good to go with downloadable, portable maps. (You can use a laptop but dang, they're hard to carry around with you, but the newer tablets are a possibility if you have enough storage room for maps.)
If you get a Ham APRS receiver, the TeleGPS can also send APRS position packets at the same time. I intend to track with a TeleBT bonded to a Nexus 7 2013 and can also use a Kenwood D72 wired to a Garmin mapping GPS, a 60CsX, for backup.
I've had a wire antenna from a Beeline GPS tracker project into the main chute bay of a Wildman JR through a small bulkhead hole. I use the cardboard tube that the wired Aerotech igniters come in wrapped with duct tape to stent the wire so the chute doesn't smush the antenna. The Beeline GPS rides forward and the Raven III rides aft in the ebay.
Now if you want to do a Ham RDF thing, you could get a Beeline RDF tracker with SMA:
https://www.bigredbee.com/zc139/ind...ducts_id=180&zenid=tbla9sfdqiasnvj1nijsam1jb4
Mount it inside of a robust box with the SMA connector exposed so you could attach any 70cm antenna you want to it. Use an Arrow Yagi antenna with a Marvin West Offset attenuator:
https://www.west.net/~marvin/k0ov.htm and you'd be good to
go with any Ham radio H/T. One caution about the cheap radios out there. Most of them the signal strength meter is either "all on" if there is a signal or "all off" if there isn't one. If you want a true strength meter, you'll have to go with a pricier rig. Some tell me they track by ear or earphones with the attenuator. Me, I'm lazy a--ed and use GPS but I understand room constraints and portability requirements may make RDF necessary. Easier to take an RDF tracker off the harness of one rocket and add it to another.
RDF is an art that folks have been using for effectively tracking rockets for years. GPS has a greater potential in shortening the recovery time as the last received position packet is usually close to the position where the downed rocket lays. Unless it's gone "stupid far" away from you, you get to the last known position and if not seeing the rocket, you're close enough to pick up a new position packet of the final resting place.
EggFinder GPS is a newer entry where the receiver can bond via B/T to an Android device or tablet. I've had help with the Ham Radio app: APRSISCE/32,
https://aprsisce.wikidot.com/, so I can get two instances running so I can monitor the NMEA packets from the rocket and the local position all on a mapquest photomap that is downloadable and storable on one's Windows tablet. Now that's kinda neat. Haven't flown it yet but have down quite a bit of ground testing. Click for enlargements.
Even though I am using my Ham callsign, I am not connected to anything other than an EggFinder LCD receiver and none of this is going out over the internet. The old mapquest photomap is downloadable with APRSIS32 for portable storage and no internet required.
The red track is the EggFinder GPS tracker or a TRS. The TRS works too. The numbers next to the dots are the GPS altitude. They can be had at selectable intervals. The track colors can be changed (on-the-fly if desired). I have the base station with a black line.
So, if anyone wants to know, it is possible to have a graphical presentation with the EggFinders. I believe one wouldn't have to be a Ham to use the program for that purpose. The program can be used in a standard fashion for APRS tracking for standard APRS tracking.
In fact, the setup is easier for that as that's what it was designed for in the first place. In a nutshell, one uses the NMEA port on two instances of APRSIS32. The NMEA port is to process the position of one's base station so it puts the monitoring station on the map in real time. Since the EggFinder is sending simple NMEA sentences like an "attached" GPS, one has one instance monitoring the ROCKET in real time at once per second. That has the Rocket taken care of. A second instance of APRSIS32 is monitoring the local position through its NMEA GPS port and "Beacons" its position as a local IS server to the 1st instance that is monitoring the ROCKET position. This second instance is open and can run minimized. That's how both positions are monitored on one screen at 1/sec as long as packets are received.
I need to do an article on this but someone else is welcome to beat me to it. Oh, if one's device has limited storage, simplier maps are available. Um, I forgot to mention, the software to do all this stuff is free to boot. Kurt
