Outboard Booster Pod Design

[respawnlater]

Hello,
Right now, I am building a Mad Cow Rocketry Sport-X kit and want to do something a little fun with it. I am thinking about trying to add 2 pods to the side of the rocket that would have the ability to act as boosters to set up and use as air starts. My intentions for right now are really to build a rocket with basically "show" booster pods that have the wiring and mounting points so that I can do things like air starts with them in the future. I've never really done anything like that before so I've got a few questions about what people think.
1) Would it make more sense to try and route the ejection charges from the pod tubes into the main body tube to eject the chute or should I look into separate charges and leave every tube structurally solid. Would I be able to find a main engine with a very long delay to eject the chutes after not only it burned out but the boosters as well?
2) What is the normal way to mount cardboard tubes parallel at a tangent with one another? I want it to be strong, not just "good enough for that size rocket". That's not how I like to build.
3) What sized booster tubes and engines would be a good pair with the 3.1" body of the Sport-X Kit?
4) How could/should I build it so that it is a more stable design. I've drawn it up the best I can using OpenRocket, but I don't know how to set up pods that would affect the aerodynamics. I made tubular fins to simulate the pods shape, however there are no nose cones so the model still isn't accurate. Especially considering I plan to run it both with and without booster engines, Id like to make it as stable with engines so that when I remove them, and the CG moves forward, its cal rating will still stay in a safe range.
5) What is a good way to route wires from the av bay to the ends of the boosters where I would have the igniters located? I was thinking I would just use small terminal blocks or wing nuts attached to threaded electrodes going through the centering rings, but I wouldn't want the wires to get snagged on anything in the inside and tear out. How could I secure them with a smooth finish and should I put them on the outside and then REALLY worry about the wire bulge being smooth?
6) And a more general question for the n00b who can't find this addressed in the instruction booklet; The kit has a body tube with a payload bay and a nose cone on top (of course). There are eyelets that you attach to one of the spacer rings on the body tube and another that you attach to the solid bulkhead that is at the aft end of the coupler. There is also however a link that looks to be for a retention cord on the nose cone which is deemed inaccessible by the bulkhead blocking the shock cords path. The nose can't be glued to the payload bay or else there isn't any way to access it, and there's no way to reach it with the shock cord, so you cant restrain it that way. How am I supposed to set up the parachute so that every piece will safely float to the ground? Also is the nose cone secured somehow or is it only press fit?


For the model I used a G40 with 2 F50's in the pods. I do not know the first thing about selecting good engines, however my thinking is that (in the model) these were basically just counterweights to approximate the full load of engines and its effect on the CG. If I remove the F50's and increase the mass of the payload bay by 250 grams, to approximate a load (which might actually be a little light), the rating jumps to a cal of 2.31. I read somewhere that a good range is between 1 and 2. Should I be worried about the rating and if so, what should I do to try and address it?

Thanks for any suggestions or help you guys can give. I'm just trying to have a blast with my rocket. (bu dum tsss)

 

[BDB]

This looks great! I can't answer most of the questions that you have posed, but I'd love to see what others have to say. But I can lend a little input on #6. For payload bays like this, just attach your shock cord to the bottom of the bay and friction fit the nosecone. For a larger kit, you could consider attaching the NC to the payload bay with a plastic rivet, but for something this size just put a little tape on the NC shoulder and jam it in.