- Joined
- Jul 23, 2012
- Messages
- 1,899
- Reaction score
- 872
Because hey, why not?
I think there's a lot of room for improvement with sonic locators. I think these have fallen out of favor a bit with the advent in recent years of RF and GPS locators. But I bet we all know of times when the fancy tracker said "it's right here" and you were thirty feet away from the darn thing and you still couldn't find it.
I have some older beepers that are a super loud continuous tone, and it's amazing how difficult it is to actually hear out in the field. A continuous tone is hard to discern out there. And the old Radio Shack warble alarms blend in with nature sounds (cicadas especially) so it's hard to be sure you're hearing them, too. I wanted something that made a CLEARLY artificial sound - a manmade pattern - and it suddenly struck me "what about Morse Code?" Once I headed in that direction using S-O-S was obvious. I mean what other message should it send??
Flew the prototype yesterday at Bong. I left the Walston out, I wanted an acid test of recovery by beeper alone. I could easily hear it a couple hundred yards away on the ground. I walked right to it, aided by sound alone. Attached is a link to the video taken as I walked up to the rocket. (Can't post it directly as it's over 20 megs.)
I am toying with the idea of making a production run of these. Any interest?
https://photos.app.goo.gl/XzN7sP0ZG8GYOb2v2
I think there's a lot of room for improvement with sonic locators. I think these have fallen out of favor a bit with the advent in recent years of RF and GPS locators. But I bet we all know of times when the fancy tracker said "it's right here" and you were thirty feet away from the darn thing and you still couldn't find it.
I have some older beepers that are a super loud continuous tone, and it's amazing how difficult it is to actually hear out in the field. A continuous tone is hard to discern out there. And the old Radio Shack warble alarms blend in with nature sounds (cicadas especially) so it's hard to be sure you're hearing them, too. I wanted something that made a CLEARLY artificial sound - a manmade pattern - and it suddenly struck me "what about Morse Code?" Once I headed in that direction using S-O-S was obvious. I mean what other message should it send??
Flew the prototype yesterday at Bong. I left the Walston out, I wanted an acid test of recovery by beeper alone. I could easily hear it a couple hundred yards away on the ground. I walked right to it, aided by sound alone. Attached is a link to the video taken as I walked up to the rocket. (Can't post it directly as it's over 20 megs.)
I am toying with the idea of making a production run of these. Any interest?
https://photos.app.goo.gl/XzN7sP0ZG8GYOb2v2
Last edited: