Overview

Building an avionics bay is a tricky task. It requires a fine balance of procrastination, supply shortages, poor design choices, and caffeine. If you manage to build an avionics bay without one or more of those components please seek professional help immediately as it is likely you're becoming an engineer. 

Steps of Avionics Bay Construction

1. Wait until two days before launch. For best results, wait until the night before.
2. Ensure you are depleted of the proper materials by discarding all heat shrink and 22 gauge wire in lab.
3. Get down to business (to defeat . . . the Huns!)
4. Find a coupler of the appropriate size. This needs to be at least twice the diameter of the vehicle long.
5. Find a section of body tube 1"-2" long.
6. Epoxy the short ring approximately in the middle of the coupler. For best results, avoid measuring.
7. Drill four 1/4in  vent holes through the short ring, which shall henceforth be known as the switch band.
8. Find a threaded rod. Overcompensation is highly recommended when choosing a threaded rod diameter. The length should be at least 1 in longer than the coupler length. This rod should have nuts rated to an appropriate pull-out force to handle the loads.
9. Find appropriately sized eye-nuts.
10. Realize you don't have the right size eye-nuts.
11. Panic
12. Decide everything will be O.K. and use U-bolts instead.
13. Find two bulkheads. Go to Todd's shop and turn a step on them. The bulkheads should now have a component that rests concentrically inside the coupler and a component that sits on the edge of the coupler.
14. Match drill the hole for the threaded rod through the center of the bulkheads. Drill holes for the U-bolts in the bulkheads.
15. Design a sled to go inside the avionics bay. Napkins are superior to CAD in this task.
16. Throw away your beautiful design due to lack of materials.
17. Cut a rectangle from MDF. Hot glue metal tubing on the back so it can slide on the threaded rod.
18. Scrounge around lab to find two (mostly) undamaged altimeters.
19. Drill holes for mounting hardware in the MDF sled to fit the altimeters.
20. Realize one of the altimeters is orientation sensitive. Redrill those holes.
21. Check clock. Notice it's midnight. Feel reassured that you have time to finish the avionics bay and your p-set, which is due in 8.5 hours.
22. Use mounting hardware to secure altimeters to avionics sled.
23. Notice it's 3 a.m.
24. Panic
25. Drill 1/4 in holes in bulkheads.
26. Find strip screw terminals.
27. Affix 4 screw terminals to each bulkhead with epoxy. Place stripped end of wire into the back side of the screw terminals. Pass wires through the hole in the bulkhead. Epoxy hole shut.
28. Measure length of wire to avionics altimeters screw terminals. Cut lead wire to length and strip ends.
29. Realize you cut the wires too short. Splice on a wire extender. Notice you have no heatshrink. Seal with hot glue instead.
30. Tighten wires in avionics screw terminals.
31. Jurry rig switch system.
32. Find two 9v batteries in lab. Correction, find one 9v battery and decide a Li-Po will do fine for the other.
33. Wire up 9v properly.
34. Cut the leads off of the Li-Po simultaneously. For bonus points, don't light anything on fire while doing this.
35. Curse loudly for several minutes.
36. Wire up the Li-Po.
37. Check clock, decide it's time to start p-set (~7 a.m.)
38. Finish p-set
39. Turn p-set in.
40. Get in car to launch site. Sleep like a newborn infant.

Congratulations, you're now the proud parental unit of an avionics bay that may or may not work and will definitely not land in one piece.

The author of this article intends it as a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual events, persons, or works is deliberate and was definitely meant to make you cringe at the memory of "that one time." No, this checklist is not copied verbatim from the Therion 2 fabrication diary.