Personally I really enjoy the HAM RDF thing. I don't see myself ever wanting to get into GPS mostly because RDF is challenging and fun. I find it extremely rewarding to "hunt" my rockets down. Being told where they are just does not have the same appeal to me although I understand why it's popular. If that isn't enough, it seems so high tech in a 1960's sort of way.
Yeah,
I can see that but unless you have a great venue, with great weather and lots of opportunities to fly, RDF doesn't promote expedient recovery so one can get their project and get back to fly more rockets period. I want it. I want it now and I want to be able to go on and fly the next one.
GPS tracking offers that much more than RDF tracking. If you wanna track a small project, RDF is the only way to go of course. I have several Yagi's with attenuators but looking on a handheld mapping GPS is just too darned easy. My recovered "sight unseen" rockets paid for
the APRS system I use in recovered hardware.
Wanna practice RDF? Build an el cheapo XFM-1 tracker and you'll get a 1200 foot radius roughly with a 3 element Yagi. Did not have to
even turn on the attenuator in flight. Got a very sharp bearing at a distance. Only had to turn on the attenuator when getting closer. But then again, I could already see the rocket on the ground. Kurt