What kind of rocket is this? Plain fiberglass? Carbon Fiber. If it's plain fiberglass, get a plain bulkhead mount for the antenna and have it facing aft into the main chute bay. You can get bulkhead interconnect cables on ebay:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SMA-Male-t...029738?hash=item1c6b76c3aa:g:nH0AAOSwA3dYTNZc
just fish around for the connectors you need.
Make sure you don't use metallic paint on this rocket as it can attenuate the signal. Now the paint might not attenuate the 900Mhz band but I know darned well it will for the 70cm band. Use plain, non-metallic paints.
If you have the antenna parallel the tracker that is going to cut down on your range. The MW tracker does 250Mw so it might have some reserve to overcome a sub-optimal antenna installation but you might want to take care to
get all the power out that you paid for. Also try to get an antenna that matches close to your transmission frequency. I use this page for referral for antennas:
https://linxtechnologies.com/wp/p/antennas/small-external-antennas/ You can compare the frequency to SWR curves for a given antenna. The closer to 1:1 the more efficient the transmission to free air. Ebay sometimes has Linx antennas up for sale.
You could try a forward facing antenna but a shorter antenna tuned for 900Mhz is less efficient. If MW supplied that antenna for you, knowing Mr. Amos, it's probably optimized for your Rf module so I'd have it face aft and be sure the upper bay tube is radiolucent.
Be aware that black colored fiberglass, though it may not contain carbon fiber thread, does contain carbon black and it can modestly attenuate the Rf signal. One fellow used sensitive testing equipment here and found a 1db loss. Not too bad but I've decided to run a 100Mw Beeline GPS tracker on the 70cm band (425Mhz) in a carbon black nosecone instead of a 16mW one. Again your MW tracker goes at 250Mw so if your nosecone shroud is black colored fiberglass, you should be in good shape. Of course, if you use that aft bulkhead facing antenna wouldn't be an issue.
Lastly, no matter what you do, do a range check out in the open if you can. If you have the aft facing antenna, do something like I and do put the NC in a box and set it on top of my tabletop chimney of a single story house and do a down and dirty range test. You could hoist the nosecone up 10 feet into a tree or put it on top of a 7 foot step ladder and walk away with your receiver and see how far you can go. Whatever you do, do not omit a range test.
If you've never GPS tracked before, consider using a lower impulse motor to keep the rocket pretty much in sight or minimize the out of sight time so you stand a very good chance of getting the rocket back if there is something
lacking with your installation. It that goes O.K then if you must, punch it for the certification. Oh, I've heard recommended if there is tall grass or thick foliage, put a beeper on your harness somewhere. I had
an experience in a no-till corn field I thought I was right on top of an EggFinder GPS with the receiver beeping away and I couldn't see it. Boy did I feel stupid with no beeper on board the rocket. Stupidhead realized
I needed to zoom in the map on my tablet and I went right to it. GPS will get you pretty close but not always right on top of it though.
If you are going to manually input lat/long into a handheld mapping GPS, make darned sure you are well practiced using the right units and convention from your receiver to your handheld mapping
GPS. Using degrees decimal degrees? Degrees, minutes, decimal minutes? Degrees, minutes, seconds? If you get the units messed up and don't have backup, you could be SOL. Wouldn't matter if the flight was a success, if you can't find it, it's a DNF. Don't laugh, I've seen a fellow do it with APRS tracking! Took him forever to find his rocket. He's been a happy camper since I saw that a simple cable between his APRS radio and Garmin mapping GPS was all he needed to automatically track. Just watch the screen.
Also, consider a higher main deployment altitude if your venue allows 800, 1000 or 1200 feet even. I never go less than 800 feet with flights that are going out of sight for a long time. The reason is once under main, with the slower
descent, GPS tracker position reception (or APRS packets for the ham stuff) settles down and more position/packets can be received to generate a trend line at altitude. This is more helpful with map plotting as opposed for
one who simply gets the last received position and then "goes there" to either find the rocket or get within the ground footprint of the tracker to get that final position if it isn't already seen.
As I understand it, the Missileworks receiver can be interfaced with Bluetooth if it has a module and tracking similar to this can be had:
https://www.rocketryforum.com/showthread.php?137555-Eggfinder-Map-tracks
I also suspect "GPS Rocket Locator":
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.frankdev.rocketlocator will work too but Google maps do not work anymore. The open source OSM still works and is cacheable for
offline use. Me suspects Google is getting squirrelly with people using their "stuff". Best of luck. With a little practice you'll bulletproof your L2 attempt. If push comes to shove, at least you'll know which tree its in!! :surprised::wink: Kurt
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