Paul KD4STH and I are looking at doing a launch from the Nebraska Star Party on August 7 from south of Valentine, NE. The region is fairly devoid of roads, and much more populated with cattle and rough terrain than people. We are considering a recovery-optional mission for this flight - if it's too difficult to retrieve, we'll skip it.
I have not kept track of the lightweight and low-cost trackers that are out there, and some are probably still in beta. Ideally I'd like something under $100 to keep our expense down should we choose not to recover it. Any ideas? Some of the lower-cost devices seem to have gone out of production.
Obviously it needs a GPS with ~120 kft altitude capability, but can be relatively low-power. It can also be on 144.39 since the ground APRS infrastructure is nil, so no competition with other stations. 1 or 2 lithium AA batteries for power would be ok as it only has to last a few hours. Telemetry is not a big deal for this flight either. Pre-configuration is OK too, I don't think we'll need to fiddle with the setup. We may have to work out timeslotting with the other flight if necessary, but I think we can do that in advance too.
