RFI abatement comes up every now and then. Yes it does bite people and I being a victim twice. One thing is to ask around what works with what.
2 watt dog trackers and Adept 22's don't play well. The Adepts shutdown. My experience a P6K (I think OOP) likely blew charges on ascent with a 150mw tracker and then with a rebuild sustainer, a 15mW tracker blew the charges while on the pad.
This was with trackers riding in the same ebay. Boy oh boy do I ground test now.
The major problem is if the tracker has to ride in the same ebay as the deployment electronics. I've had flawless performance with the Ravens riding right next to the low powered 70cm Beeline GPS trackers. BLGPS on top and Raven sitting aft in the bay.
Twisted wires = good practice.
Deployment electronics with opto-isolators may make a very big difference. I tested out an EggTimer Qwark with 5 watts of 2 meter, MURS and 70cm frequencies over 15 minutes time each. Had the Qwark wired up to naked ematches and was squawking
the "ready to go" beep. Only thing I could get the device to do was a change in tone of the beeping sound. That was with the tip of antenna actually touching the white opto-isolator chip on the board blasting away with pulses of 5 watts Rf. Pretty extreme
mind you.
The device kept up the "ready to go" beeping throughout the test, no popping of matches, no shutdown or reset. Very encouraging if you ask me. The EggTimer flight computer is of similar design but I haven't tested one like this. I suspect it may behave in the same manner.
From what I gather from others, to test an installation with a tracker and deployment electronics, Connect everything up with contained bare ematches. Turn everything on, stand up the rocket and let it sit for 30 to 60 minutes. No match popping, no altimeter resets or shutdowns and you are likely going to have an excellent chance that the flight will not be interrupted by stray Rf. Do not assume that sticking the tracker in the nosecone is going to alleviate the problem unless you test it out
Like I said, ask around. That's a good start. Then test to satisfy yourself. Better that than this:
https://www.tripolipeoria95.com/uploads/OMG5.jpg
One comment about the issues with the GPS position acquisition. Have seen some comments in the Altus group. One thing I've noted with the BLGPS and I have some old ones, is if the keep alive battery goes dead man oh man it takes a loooooong time
to get an initial lock even out in the open. Also if the unit has been off for a long time it may take longer. For that reason I replace the battery for utility when need be.
I've had no issues with the Altus Tele-GPS but Bdale had mentioned that unit seems to lock faster that the others for some reason. Kurt