There's no technical reason for either to collect more or less accurate GPS data. The licensing only affects the radios used to transmit the data.
The issue is the reliable reception and decoding of the positioning information. GPS is GPS and some chipsets are better than others when flying in rockets. If one wants an accurate record of position for plotting on a map, buy a tracker with onboard
memory for later download as they will not receive every single position over the Rf link. I don't care what one uses, licensed or unlicensed trackers doesn't matter. There are a host of factors in receiving and decoding the digital information from
a rocket tracker in flight. Suffice it to say I've missed positions from both systems. APRS trackers that beacon once every 5 seconds I don't hear from for 20 second after apogee and EggFinders that really don't settle down sending consistent positions
until the main chute is out. Once in a slower descent, the positions are more reliable and the number that are decoded successfully increases. That is what is important to find the rocket and is the reason I blow mains at 800' or higher if space allows. Gives one time to develop a drift trend as I like to see on a map so I know the direction the rocket was drifting before it touched down. Sure people input the last known position into a handheld GPS and generally have good luck finding the rocket, but if flying on the
extreme with a low powered unlicensed GPS tracker, a drift line seen on a live map tells one with a great degree of certainty which direction to proceed to get into the ground footprint of the tracker.
With sport flying, manual data transfer is perfectly fine because the rocket likely isn't going extreme distances but one has to accurately manually transfer the position, minding the proper units for this to be successful.
As far as Ham radio. Ham radio is a very broad field. It is not expected that a licensee know every little detail about every available mode. Especially at the entry level. The information about Fox-hunting or RDF can be searched for and perused.
It's not necessarily covered in detail just to pass an entry level exam. That is
directly applicable to rocket tracking.
One tidbit I'll pass on now. Don't use a Yagi for 900Mhz tracking flights. If one needs some gain, get a patch antenna. Yagi's are fine for Ham band trackers.
A 900 Mhz Yagi is O.K. once the rocket is down and it will increase the ground footprint of the tracker. The beamwidth of a Yagi on 33cm/900Mhz is narrow and conceivably could be hard to keep pointed in the presumed rocket direction.
Once the rocket is on the ground, as long as it's not being blown around, it's easier to point a Yagi towards the last known position.
With totally out of sight flights, I'm able to keep a receiving patch antenna pointed in the direction of the rocket by watching the live map on my tablet. The positions get plotted live and I can keep the antenna pointed in the general direction.
As it's coming down, I'll sneak a glance to see if I can get a visual. A patch antenna on a 10' pole really increases the range of reliable tracking with the lower powered EggFinders. Kurt
Screen saves from various programs:
Patch antenna on a pole