First a correction:

It turned out that sharing a battery between the Beeline and the Parrot wasn't the root cause of the interference; simple proximity was. I wasted most of Thursday getting the avionics bay set up again with separate batteries only to find out that the interference was still there, worse than before. I wasted more time with shielding, which helped a little, but was too unrepeatable. So, running out of time, I decided to totally re-work the interior of the rocket, and change it up to put the Parrot on top, then the parachute, and then the Beeline next to the motor. Those few inches of separation between the Parrot and beeline eliminated the interference, but set me up for the problems we saw Saturday afternoon.

Now the interior of the rocket was about 1.5" longer than it would have been. I had made the nosecone half of the rocket extra long when I rebuilt it, expecting to cut it down a bit when I found out just how big the insides were, but now it wasn't quite long enough. To make a little more room, I added a 1/4" section of AF tube to the coupler. The trouble was that (1), 1/4" wasn't quite long enough so that the gap between the top half and the bottom half wouldn't quite close when everything was packed in, and (2) the coupler overlap section was shorter. The result was that the heavily-weighted top half of the rocket was just a little floppy when it sat on the bottom half. I think that the top half of the rocket bent over a bit and gave the CG a radial offset from the thrust line, which is why the rocket corkscrewed so badly coming out of the tower.

Normally I also start timing at launch and note when the Beeline signal gets fainter or goes away. In the heat of the moment, though, I didn't, so I'm not sure exactly when the signal ended abruptly. But it was about 30-60 seconds into the flight. Bad news. I searched for hours on Saturday evening and never did pick the signal back up. I'm pretty sure that the rocket came in ballistically. At about 3:00 AM on Sunday I woke up and realized what I did wrong. When I prepped the rocket at the pad, I slid the avionics bay along the shock cord and deep into the nosecone part of the airframe, and then did the same thing with the piston. Instead, after the airframe was in place, I should have sealed off where the cord went through the piston while the piston was out of the airframe, and then let the cord bunch up between the piston and the avionics bay. As it was, the only way that the piston could have come out would have been to break the shock cord or to magically unwrap the necessary length of shock cord from the parachute compartment so that it could get through the hole in the piston when the piston was trying to get out. Argghh.

Next time, I'll do a better job with the airframe to make it stiffer, with more glass all around, and longer, carbon-fiber coupler. Also, the new version of the Parrot will have 3 outputs. Now I think I'll make the 3rd one a switch to turn the Beeline on at Apogee (or maybe after the main deployment) so that I can still put the Parrot and Beeline next to each other to save space, and still eliminate the interference problem.

Oh, and more testing with plugged C11s or D12s at home before loading up with a G37 with a checklist.

Designing is fun, but starting from scratch sucks.

Don't feel bad Adrian. In my quest for those Wilke records, I've built a successive series of 5 birds and all but the first and the last are lost somewhere out on the prairie.

Aeolus 1 - Took club E record during a test flight. It really wasn't optimized for the motor and was about 1.5" too long and 18 grams too heavy. Intended for the F21.

Aeolus 2 - Almost identical to Aeolus 1 except smaller fins. Flight 1 got within 40-60 feet of Wilke's then standing F altitude record on a much smaller motor. Lost on 3rd attempt.

Aeolus 3 - Lost on maiden flight. Newer design with 2 separate zipperless booster sections to handle both F32 and G55 motors.

Aeolus 4 - Lost on maiden flight. Identical to Aeolus 3.

Aeolus 5 - Un-flown. Identical to Aeolus 3, but somewhat modified to provide room for Adept tracker and only have G55 booster section. Unfortunately, the tracker doesn't fit and the electronics bay needs to be rebuilt. Haven't had the balls to fly it because I don't want yet another Perfectflight altimeter to end up lost on the prairie.

What needs to happen is for just 1 of John's records to fall and I would bet real money (or a bottle of good scotch) that as soon as folks realize John isn't unbeatable, others will try. Personally I think the F and G records are nearly unbeatable - at least as a TRA world record - because the motors just aren't available. However, the H, I, J, K, and L club records are all within reach of good design, construction, and tracking technique. Chris LaPanse came within a hair's breath of it last year and it can be done again.

I think your Parrot is a technology breakthrough in terms of size and capability that will allow it to be done.

Warren

Aeolus 5 -

Thanks, Warren. Interesting history. Was Aeolus-1 the "Momentary Lapse of Reason" listed in the altitude records?

What needs to happen is for just 1 of John's records to fall and I would bet real money (or a bottle of good scotch) that as soon as folks realize John isn't unbeatable, others will try. Personally I think the F and G records are nearly unbeatable - at least as a TRA world record - because the motors just aren't available. However, the H, I, J, K, and L club records are all within reach of good design, construction.......

They are ALL beatable, trust me. I've incremented each of them, and none of the rockets was what I would consider complex. Well built, yes - but as you guys know, I own no tools 😯 so if I can do it, y'all can do it.

The M is probably the most attainable now (though one needs a higher waiver, etc.) which is why I am trying to bust it this summer. I'm doing a project with someone to increment the H and I records. To me, the one that is the most perplexing is the K - no good motor for that. The Loki K350 hardware just weighs too much and is too long... I wish another motor was available?

The dog collar thing has opened up a bunch of doors, too!

Yeah, the Aeolus moniker was the name I gave the design series. Each individual bird ends up with a different name that actually ends up on the flight cards.

The actual Aeolus series were the Aeolus E, the Aeolus F/G (Aeolus 1), Aeolus 29, Aeolus 38, and Aeolus 54. Nothing but a geek with an urge to overcomplicate something... The Aeolus 38 flew as "Can't Buy a Thrill" and the Aeolus 54 will eventually fly (if we get a waiver window or I get to BALLS) as "Delicate Sound of Thunder".

As a matter of facts: the Aeolus E got chewed by one of my dogs after successfully taking the club E record (possibly world record, but TRA doesn't recognize one and NAR's records don't allow for electronics). There have been several Aeolus F/G birds built - 3 are out on the prairie somewhere and the 4th is on the shelf in my shop. The Aeolus 29 was cannabilized to become my Single Shot Sweepstakes bird when we used the H180 motor. Can't Buy a Thrill was a shot at the J record using a J570 and it suffered heavy damage on recovery due to too much BP behind the piston as well as impact damage. Parts of it are on the shelf waiting for me to buy some more airframe and new fins. Delicate Sound of Thunder is designed around the Ellis L330 and AT L1500T. It's been ready to fly for nearly 3 years, but either the waiver hasn't come through, the weather sucked, or tracking wasn't available.

W