Not knowing what to get me for Christmas 2002, my girlfriend (now wife) presented me with a bunch of Estes model rockets! I thought they were great and following several successful launches quickly decided that I wanted to move into high power rockets. A quick search of the web and lurk around the newsgroups revealed Pete's Rockets in Lincolnshire, half an hour or so away. Pete stocked a range of high power kits and after some deliberation I decided I liked the look of the Public Missiles AMRAAM 3. Pete was very helpful, giving plenty of advice and construction tips.
Unfortunately my track record of recovering the model rockets I had launched up to then was dreadful - it wasn't that the 'chutes weren't deploying, rather that they were being carried away by the wind, disappearing into clouds, woods, etc never to be seen again! The perils of launching in an English winter. I was extremely reluctant to see my high power rockets go the same way: electronic tracking seemed like the way to go and I quickly found Hugh Gemmell's web pages which included a basic schematic for a radio "beeper" and some tips on yagis and receivers.
Radioworld provided the Yupiteru MVP-7100 scanner used to receive the tracker signal.
Read more about rocket tracking.