Eggfinder Mini Shock Cord Mounting

[Donnie]

All--

Just ordered an Eggfinder Mini, and have been floating around some ideas about mounting it on a shock cord...

This setup would be nice for some mid-power rockets that don't have a payload / ebay, and having it shock-cord mounted also makes it a snap to transfer between rockets (sharing with friends, etc.).

A rocket I had in mind is my daughter's Estes PSII Star Orbiter.

So, I'm milling about a couple different options, including:

1. making a payload "capsule" out of a piece of body tube, then securing said capsule to the body tube... question here is should it go below or above the chute, as I don't want the shroud lines to get tangled in this thing during deployment
2. just wrapping it in a nomex chute protector...

A more general question is what to do with the battery? I know I don't want to cover the GPS antenna with the battery, but is it ok to just zip tie the battery to another location on the board? Better to make a flat sled that holds the battery and the tracker in line with each other?

I guess I'm leaning towards making the capsule, but not sure about the order of operations for shoving it down into the body tube when packing the chute?

Any advice appreciated. Thanks!

 

[cerving]

I've flown them wrapped up in Nomex to over 14,000' and Mach 1.5. Loop the shock cord through the blanket, and fold the blanket around the shock cord before you tape it all up, so that when you tape it all up the shock cord can't pull the tape apart. That would be bad. If you do it right, nothing is going to move... use plenty of tape.

If you want to do a "capsule", that's fine, if you use a 24mm piece of tubing then you can just set the Mini above the battery. Just pack it all so that it can't move... a little foam will help.

No matter which way you go, you should wrap a piece of masking tape around your battery connector before you pack it. You don't want any movement pulling the pins out of the battery connector (yes, I've seen it happen).

 

[PokerJones]

These also work well.

https://www.labratrocketry.com/product-page/shockcord-protective-sleeves

 

[Cl(VII)]

Thanks for the plug, Jeff.

I have a full sled and mounting line for the EF mini. It will take care of your battery placement too. The same sled can be mounted in many different ways including shockcord mounting.

You can see the sled and mounting packages here: https://www.labratrocketry.com/product-page/tracker-sled-eggfinder-mini

You can see how the shockcord mounting system goes together here: https://www.labratrocketry.com/shockcord-protective-sleeve