-The test article of the flight, the ABSOLUTELY TINY "Femto Pecan" APRS tracker had some sort of antenna woes and was only heard within about 1/2 mile of it.
Our chase cars went to the suspected landing area and were able to follow the payload down using LoRa signal strength alone. Once on the ground all contact was lost. We then split up the 3 chase cars and covered different search patterns until LoRa signal was re-acquired. That allowed us to then pick up the faint Femto Pecan signal to get the exact GPS landing location. Phew!
We were surrounded by open fields, so of course it landed just inside some woods way up a pine tree. Tim, master of the bow and arrow, was able to get a line over the payload train and pull it down.
I had been given a firm weather forecast of 100% cloud coverage, so I didn't expect much from the camera onboard. Thankfully the skies cleared and we got some wonderful video.