Kurt---all great advice. I'm going to fly a loud sonic beeper in the recovery harness as well as an aid to finding it on the ground. Fortunately vegetation is very low this time of year--if I can keep it away from the trees. I'm flying a Jolly Logic Chute Release, so I'm letting it drop on a 18" drogue chute, and then deploy the main 30" chute at 300 feet. Fingers crossed!
Another thing to consider, especially with these 900Mhz trackers is if you drop it in real low and blow at 300 feet, if the rocket is far enough out, you might have a LOS sooner rather than later relatively. 70cm trackers will give you an edge with better propagation though. Plus you have to pray the chute opens in time. If not, either you have a scuffed up rocket or the GPS receive antenna snaps off the board If you don't affix the antenna on with J&B. Now I know you're doing RDF here but if you have the rocket blow down low, chute fouls, one has problems. Fine fun for modroc or medium power. More time for chute deployment is helpful I think.
If your project has the potential to be totally sight unseen, You might want to consider blowing the main chute a bit higher so you can have more time to get a bearing fix and develop a drift pattern. Rf trackers work better if you have altitude for propagation's sake and more time to figure out what's going
on, on descent.
Say you blow the main up higher, the rocket is not seen and your Yagi is pointing east. If the wind is carrying the rocket south, which you will notice as you will have to gradually move your Yagi towards the south to maintain the maximum, You've established a one dimensional drift pattern. Once LOS occurs, lock in the direction and proceed towards the rocket.
Since the drift pattern was to the south, you'll want to sometimes point the Yagi off your last bearing towards the south in case the rocket drifted a bit further in that direction when the LOS occurred. Here's where a properly functioning GPS tracker has an edge. One has a lat/long and sometimes an altitude at the last known position.
Proceed to that position and if the rocket isn't there, one is within the ground footprint to either pick up the Rf or if the GPS has a good fix, receive the final resting place position. Done.
People rant and rave about this tracker didn't work or that tracker didn't work and I bet it was due to 1. Battery or power failure. 2. Deployment failure
of any kind or 3. Going completely outside of the tracking capabilities of the system (ie. using a 900Mhz RDF system, not GPS, out on the playa with
a rocket that's going 30,000 feet. 4. Using a flight profile that doesn't fit the tracker. That would be having a totally sight unseen flight that is going to be
travelling a long distance away and blowing the main down too low so one doesn't have the time to develop a drift pattern. This stuff can happen very quickly.
Remember, if one can see the rocket coming in under main that trumps everything! As long as it's accessible, you'll find it no matter if you're using
RDF, GPS, sonic screamer or whathaveyou. Walk the bearing to the the last known sighting and you will find it. Rf will make it easier and
more reassuring.
Chute, I've recovered modrocs in chest high grass (I did luck out a bit as the metallized streamers stayed on top) by sighting with a "Sight n' Go" feature on a GPS and "walked the line", eventually coming upon the rockets! Best of luck, Kurt