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From: payne@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Andrew Payne)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: homing device
Message-ID: <9838@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Date: 5 Mar 90 03:10:26 GMT
References: <77839@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1990Mar4.192004.3701@ns.network.com>
Reply-To: payne@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Andrew Payne)
Distribution: sci.electronics
Organization: Cornell Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 32

In article <1990Mar4.192004.3701@ns.network.com> logajan@ns.network.com (John Logajan) writes:
>brentley r smith <bsmith@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes:
>>My roommate and I are involved with building a rather unique model rocket.
>
>>a small transmitter in the nosecone or somewhere and a hand-held device that
>>will indicate the rocket is to the left or to the right of the direction the
>
>  [.. stuff deleted ..]
>
>However, once you get near the "crash" site, I would suggest a loud pieso
>beeper.  We've searched for hours in weeds and tall grasses for small
>rockets that were within a few feet of us.  A beeper would have reduced
>that time to seconds.
>
	This is an excellent idea.  In fact, a loud piezo buzzer may be all
you need.  My dad and bother used one out of a smoke detector to locate
downed RC planes.  In a test, my dad put the unit several hundred yards 
back in the woods, on the other side of a hill.  My brother and I had 
absolutely no trouble finding it -- those things are loud!  One thing 
though, when we got near the buzzer, it got a little hard to tell what 
direction the sound was coming from.  But at this point, we were so close
all we had to do was start using our eyes.
	Another idea, though I've never tried it:  get one of those "bionic
ears", and put an active RC audio filter tuned to the frequency of the 
piezo buzzer.  I would guess you could hear the thing from a mile away
with that setup.


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Andrew C. Payne, N8KEI        UUCP:  ...!cornell!batcomputer!payne
                          INTERNET:  payne@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu