Hmmm.... At a Brothers, OR launch in May, I had a rocket drift 5000ft (close enough to a mile), and my Marco Polo had a signal after it was on the ground. It would come and go as I moved around, but worked well enough. What surprised me a bit is that the signal strength was better from inside the car as we drove to it. I.e. - No signal if I stepped out of the car, but had a signal inside. It appeared that the signal was being reflected off of the hood, as the signal strength was considerably greater driving in the direction of the rocket, less signal when we had to turn and was no longer pointing the receiver over the hood. Only downside to the recovery was having to crawl under a couple of barbed wire fences.The Marco Polo is nice and the arrow pointing the way is handy, but, biggest drawback is range is pretty limited. You need to see the general area of where to rocket is and then start walking toward it. Your range is like 300 yards (or less) once the rocket is on the ground.
I may start flying both in the same airframe for redundancy. The thing I love about the Eggfinder is it transmits the no joke lat and long of your rocket, you just have to figure out how to get there. Marco Polo is just like a beacon you have to walk to. You don’t know exactly where it is, but as you get closer the signal increases until you find it.
Practically speaking in our area either work well, but, if you have dreams of flying Black Rock and 30,000 foot flights, the Marco Polo isn’t going to cut it.
The previous month I had one land in roughly the same direction, but "only" 3500ft away. Had a good signal all the way.
Hans.