I haven't used a cell phone, but the Garmin Astro setup is great. I flew my first L3 attempt w/o it and walked for nearly 45 miles to find it. I just had a falcon transmitter on it. The next 2 attempts (3rd was successful) I walked right to my rocket, and was back on the flight line within an hour. The 2nd and 3rd attempts with the GPS went to 25k and 27k. Just this past weekend I fly my M hybrid to ~10k and it drifted north. I had the GPS on it and walked right to it - was really nice to be able to know where it was, was it moving and how fast. Well worth the investment.

Edward

The dog collars are great. I'll never fly a bird bigger than 38mm without one again.

Try to stick with the Dog!

I bought a transmitter a few years back before I knew what I was buying.
($150) Mine actually transmits on the European band.
Had a range of like 150 miles in the air. Some guys were using it to track baloons. Then after that I found out I would have to buy this that and the other.
I bought a nice Kenwood radio ($450) that would accept those packet thingys. 400 megihertz band.
And it would have to plug into a $650 GPS.....................

Then mike showed us the Dog Collers.
The Dc30 might be able to be shoe horned into 29mm.
I chickened out when I got that far into the DISASSEMBLY! 😉
I have had the Dc20 into 38mm before.

I have retrieved several rockets that I would have had ABSOLUTELY no chance in finding without the doggie collar.

Now I'm trying to put one in a 38mm tube. The on/off button broke, which seems to be a common malady, and I've been forced to take it apart...

Of note, they are durable. I've had one suffer two main deploys at speed resulting in the collar in the nosecone tumbling to earth with no apparent effects.

I've chased rockets over four miles with it. Best of all, it lets you stuff large engines into your birds without fear of losing them. Too bad Garmin doesn't package one for rockets.

I think the DC30 and DC40 would work better for smaller diameter rockets. I like the DC20 because it's rugged and I don't have to take it apart.

Edward

I'm with Edward - I won't take them apart. I have 2 DC20 collars and all I've needed to do was put a 90 degree SMA feedthru to turn the antenna 90 degrees. it won't fit 54mm though... Does great in my 4" and 5" birds though.

Bear, what was that doohickey transmitter device you pulled out of your pocket at the NCR launch yesterday?

Warren,

are you interested in selling a DC20?

The doohickey was a GPS tracker that a friend gave to me. He had thought his wife was cheating on him. she was, they are divorced no, so he gave it to me to see if I could use it in a rocket.
I have not used it yet, but as he explained it to me, it has it's own prepaid T-mobile account. The device locks onto the satellites (that is what the instructions are showing, then sends the information to it's cell phone account and you call the account to get the location. You can use a computer to do this also.I have checked with the T-mobile amp for accessiblity and both launch sites are supposedly covered. Probably at eh February meet I will expirement with it and maybe launch it to see how well it works. My intention is to call it with my Droid, which is on Verizon, ( which allowed me to have 3G at the north site in October (I even watched movies in my car one night))and then track it to the coordinates it shows, to recover the bird. Teh website my friend bought it from no longer carries it, so I went looking for other sources. It is simply called "Mini Global GPS Tracker". That is what I entered into Google and I cam up with a number of sources. My friend paid $99.95 in January of last year. I have found it anywhere from $20 less to halp that price if you buy more than 5 at a tiem. The things are made in China and although the instructions are in English, I think I still need a translator to knwo what the author is trying to say. My friend got it working for his tracking needs, so I am sure he can help me understand ti and I can pass this on to anyone who buys one. Two sources I found are linked below. I hope this helps.
http://www.chinavasion.com/gps-tracking-devices/cvplg2032gen/ 64.13

and:

http://www.dhgate.com/mini-global-gps-tracker/p-ff808081306e93d30130839cd97a3b9c.html 48.72

Not at this time Dave. I've still got a couple K through N motors I plan on flying in my magazine, so until I burn up all that AP, I'm going to keep my birds fully flyable. Ask me again next year after I've had a chance to fly those birds.