Just to let you guys know if its not too late out transmitter is on 222.190Mhz.

By good advice the tracking system is approved in Australia.

Any recommended models / places to get the tracking beacons from for this unit?

Whats up hobbies just have to choose a transmitter frequency when you order they will give you a list to choose from.

i would wait until mike has sorted a few things out and we will do a mass order will catch up with him this coming sunday at the launch and go from there

Thats the go see you all Sunday.

well buzzard has taken orders for 15 to 20 trackers already cost will be around $20.00 to $30.00 dollars give or take

they work very well and they have some other nice little features

Sounds great. I'll definitely be after one of them.

Me too, i'll grab one of them for sure.

Hey Wolf/Buzzard,
    do we have any details for the trackers you guys mentioned a while back. I'm going to be playing around with my avionics bay and i wouldnt mind sussing out the dimensions of the unit so i can potentially leave room (i suspect there wont be any room anyway). Do you guys have any pics with any sizes on the unit at this stage?.

Its not big size smaller then a packet of matches.

Hi Guys




The board measures 44 by 25 mm

The 1mm mounting holes are 39mm by 20 mm but can be re-drilled to 3 or 4mm if required.

Personally I would mount them with double sided tape, hot glue or zip-ties.

I've got a fair few of them.

Sweet, only slightly bigger than a perfectflite timer...should be able to fit both on the one side with a bit of luck.

Any need for that aerial to stick out of anything or is it happy to hang loose inside the avionics bay?

Whats the range on these bad boys....

Slightly more pertinent....if i have a battery hooked up for dual deploy, is it wise to have same battery powering this thing or a separate 9V powering the locator?.  I would assume separate batteries for each. Can this be powered by anything less/smaller than 9V?

PS...Great job by the way buzzard.

I would use a seperate battery.

Thanks Dogzilla.

The battery is really up to you. I figured you would probably have a 9 volt in there for anything else so just plug it into that one. The unit has a voltage regulator so will handle anything between 7 volts and 20 volts and doesn't draw all that much, but will flatten a full 9v battery in less than 12 hours.

If your deployment system does draw too much, it will brown out but should then reset and start beeping again.

The only thing that will foul it up is if your deployment charge shorts, and draws off all the power continuously. Unlikely but possible.

If there are any concerns run it off a separate 2/3 AAA 12 volt cell. These are really light, cheap last a while and amplify the buzzers beep.

The antenna can just hang in the airframe. Its only 17cm long so not a huge problem.

I have tested the range to 2 km in suburbia with no problems. The unit was in my office (brick building) and I went scurrying over the hill with an rdf unit. In open country the range should extend up quite a bit more and in the air should be around 10 km. Ranges in excess of 2-3 km should be ok (but I need to test that in Toodyay). The bad news is that if it lands in a paddock of green wheat, the range will fall off a lot. (Moisture absords radio waves, but we will need some test data. Theoretically it should be ok for well over 1km in this case but..)

The unit includes an audio beeper. When you plug it in it beeps three times to let you know its on, starts the radio then waits 10 minutes before it starts the external beeper. The external beeper isn't very big but you can replace it with a larger one if you want. The onboard one is quite clear at 50 plus metres.