Nice work Adrian! It's what I've always envisioned my av bays to be but been too lazy to actually fabricate. It would also be a nice addition to the package if you included or had add ons available for adaptors to 54 75 98 etc. I've always thought it would be great to have a modular av bay so I dont have to redesign them for every rocket. Looking forward to seeing it in person.
-Sean

That is utterly gorgeous...! Well done Adrian, I want one.

Warren

Thanks, guys. See you tomorrow, though I may be a little late.

-Adrian

Though the flight part of the flight test wasn't successful, the av-bay was.

After what looked like a clean boost at first, the nosecone came off during the coast phase, right when it was transitioning back from supersonic to subsonic flight. Reviewing the recorded Raven data, no charges fired, but inadequate venting led to about 3.8 lbs of internal pressure pushing the nosecone off, and there may have been some drag separation force, too. So the nosecone came off at about 700 mph, which ripped the chute canopy from the risers, but the 3Dogs 1/8" shock cord that was just clamped to the deployment terminals held.

The two sections fell together from about 10 kfeet, and both of them embedded themselves about 5" in the ground, pointy end down. In the case of the airframe, that meant that the av-bay with the antenna sticking out took the brunt of it. As the airframe plunged into the dirt, the antenna got wrapped back around the side of the airframe, and only about 1" was sticking out of the ground. Surprisingly, that 1" was enough to be able to pick up the signal, first from the ridge, and then from the flight line.

Amazingly, the av-bay protected the rest of the airframe so that the only things I'll need to replace for it to fly again are the parachute, 4 threaded rods for the av-bay (or I could straighten them), the buzzer on the Raven (which was broken off by the capacitor moving sideways), and the I216 reload.

drool...

I'm glad you found it. It wasn't looking good while you and John were doing the tracker dance.

Amazingly enough, we both had it from the bluff to the S of the launch site. We then outsmarted ourselves and drove around the back way, thinking it had landed over thattaway. It came in fairly close to the launch site....

Yeah, with the weak signal from the bluff, we figured it was out by the windmill a mile away. Turned out that the signal was weak because the tracker was mostly subterranean. 😀