A while back I got a T2-301 for balloon tracker use. It looked like an ideal package to me.
Last weekend I got a chance to fly it. Power was a 4x CR123A pack; GPS was a Garmin GPS18. Friday's flight was superb, although a bit of brush-busting was required during the retrieval. We missed the edge of the Little River Canyon by a few hundred yards. Saturday's flight went well - until the landing: http://aprs.fi/?call=KG4WSV-14&mt=m&z=11&timerange=1604800 yeah, the track is right - it landed in the lake. In case anyone is interested, the T2-301 is _not_ waterproof. :( (note to self, the balloon symbol is /O, not /o.) I pulled the thing apart, including desoldering the shield "cans", and cleaned it a few times with isopropyl alcohol. It works again! There is a fair amount of corrosion; I don't know how long it will continue to work. It certainly isn't flight-worthy any more, although I hope it lasts long enough for me to develop a microcontroller interface to do cutdowns and other command and control by APRS message instead of DTMF. I've already got more T2-301s on my hardware request list. If I get my way, this is our standard balloon tracker from here on out. -Jason kg4wsv
