A way to find every bird in real time

[rkumetz]

Originally Posted by hawkerev

Ron,

Guys I hunt with in the Mnts of western NC use them all the time as the primary tracking device. Try and stay behind a plot hound on a bear track and tell me they don't go as far. I have recovered dogs as far away as 30 miles and Iv heard of men recovering dog as far away as 80 miles. Sooner or later someone will develop an affordable system.

From a purely technical perspective, the amount of signal necessary to get a bit error rate adequate to support the type of signal needed to send the GPS information is significantly higher than that needed to support reliable
reception of an on/off modulated CW signal. A decent telemetry receiver only needs about -150dbm of signal (very little indeed) to give you a blip. I challenge anyone to make a GPS receiver work under the same signal
levels.

GPS is nice and I would buy one for my dog if I had the extra cash to burn but I would make it share a collar with my conventional telemetry which will work under seriously adverse conditions.

That being said, if a hunter is not willing to take the time to learn the skills necessary to make conventional telemetry work for him then he or she is
clearly better off with GPS.