Yes, there's an option to make it either a standard deployment controller or an airstart controller. In airstart mode, you can also use the drogue channel to fire like a real drogue, i.e. at apogee, for either the chute in the booster or the drogue in the sustainer.
That adds great utility to the unit. Congratulations. Folks with smaller two stage projects would likely still have to consider a small "Raven-like" multi-channel all-in-one unit. The key is simulating the heck out of a project to avoid what happened at MWP a few years back. A small obviously two stage, timer actuated project got up a bit on the booster (not very high mind you), did a few loops and then the sustainer fired at 20 to 30 degrees above the horizon. Fortunately, it went away from the crowd.
I'm sure the folks out west in the wide open spaces aren't "as concerned" but some sites that are more constrained are getting leary of two stage APCP projects. If I was really "into" that sort of thing, I'd likely bring video on a hand held device to show
the RSO that my project had flown before and was successful. Yeah, there's always a first time but perhaps that's best had at a less sparsely attended club launch.
Oh, I think the smallest multi channel controller was the precursor to the Raven the Parrot. (Anyone know of anything smaller?) It had three channels and is programmable. I had one that was lost in a crash. Landowner found it 4 days later but I didn't get it back for 18 months.
The buzzer was cracked and I simply replaced it and the onboard Lipo battery. Downloaded the ballistic flight and got a nice parabola. I keep intending to stick it in a beater rocket and try flying it again sometime but haven't got around to it.
I did hear that they could get out of calibration and weren't salvageable if that occurred. I don't know how one would tell.
One bad thing about the Parrot was if one had ematches on all three channels, if two were bad and one had continuity, it beeped one continuity message. One wouldn't be warned that the other matches/channels didn't have continuity.
That's what burned me. I was thinking MAWD while the rocket was on the pad, disconnected the apogee charge and then remembered the idiosyncrasy of the Parrot. I screwed the apogee ematch back into the terminal and missed one leg!
Main blew, cardboard main bay zippered, cord broke and the only thing I initially got back was a sliced plastic nosecone and the parachute that didn't look stressed at all.
Maybe it's good the Parrot went out of production. Kurt