I posted a picture of my cat wearing his tracking transmitter in the giveaway thread, but I didnt want to talk about it until the contest was over.
As some of you know from past posts, I've long wanted a tracker on my cat that was lightweight with a battery that lasted a long time. I couldn't find one. Everything on amazon was either really big or really cheap and all attempts to build one turned out not so nice..
Long story short, it happened, he went missing. I eventually found him 6 weeks later 5 miles away hanging out on a different lake, all thanks to a guy who reported seeing him in the area earlier that week. I spent the whole next week searching for trackers and stumbled upon telemetry transmitters for falcons. How did I miss that???
This thing is sweet! Its water resistant, takes cheap CR2023 batteries, weighs 9 grams, runs for a month, has a low battery alarm, and turns on and off via magnet. There is even a mode that slows down the pulse rate when it assumes the animal is lost to conserve power. They can be reprogrammed too. I live in a heavily wooded area with hills. I expected limited range from such a low power transmitter, but I get a strong signal when he is a mile into the woods. I still have not had a situation where he was out of range! They claimed -154dBm receiver sensitivity, I believe it!
The best part is, and I just learned this today while out looking for the cat, that the receiver works GREAT for locating power pole noise too!!! It has a three-position attenuator for locating up close. I had no idea I was buying two tools in one! The receiver is built onto the yagi and the whole thing folds up nice. The build quality and thought that went into it is amazing! What they call volume is really a gain control and cranking it up doesn't change the volume, but rather makes it possible to lower the gain inside each attenuator setting. That makes direction finding a breeze!
They also sell lightweight GPS trackers, but the battery only lasts 3-4 days. I'm not getting anything out of bragging them up except the hope it might keep someone elses pet from getting lost. Check them out at marshallradio.com. They took the idea of research transmitters and made them practical for every day use! The one I have is the VHF scout transmitter.
As some of you know from past posts, I've long wanted a tracker on my cat that was lightweight with a battery that lasted a long time. I couldn't find one. Everything on amazon was either really big or really cheap and all attempts to build one turned out not so nice..
Long story short, it happened, he went missing. I eventually found him 6 weeks later 5 miles away hanging out on a different lake, all thanks to a guy who reported seeing him in the area earlier that week. I spent the whole next week searching for trackers and stumbled upon telemetry transmitters for falcons. How did I miss that???
This thing is sweet! Its water resistant, takes cheap CR2023 batteries, weighs 9 grams, runs for a month, has a low battery alarm, and turns on and off via magnet. There is even a mode that slows down the pulse rate when it assumes the animal is lost to conserve power. They can be reprogrammed too. I live in a heavily wooded area with hills. I expected limited range from such a low power transmitter, but I get a strong signal when he is a mile into the woods. I still have not had a situation where he was out of range! They claimed -154dBm receiver sensitivity, I believe it!
The best part is, and I just learned this today while out looking for the cat, that the receiver works GREAT for locating power pole noise too!!! It has a three-position attenuator for locating up close. I had no idea I was buying two tools in one! The receiver is built onto the yagi and the whole thing folds up nice. The build quality and thought that went into it is amazing! What they call volume is really a gain control and cranking it up doesn't change the volume, but rather makes it possible to lower the gain inside each attenuator setting. That makes direction finding a breeze!
They also sell lightweight GPS trackers, but the battery only lasts 3-4 days. I'm not getting anything out of bragging them up except the hope it might keep someone elses pet from getting lost. Check them out at marshallradio.com. They took the idea of research transmitters and made them practical for every day use! The one I have is the VHF scout transmitter.
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