Recovering U2430341 radio sonde

A cold and frosty morning

Watnell is north of my location so the radio sondes launched from there need to travel south, which is unusual because the prevailing wind and the jetstream tend to be westerly. It was launched around 05:15 and I had been tracking it from about 07:00 watching it slowing approaching my location. It was due to land near Basing Wood on the north side of Basingstoke. I had walked through Basing Wood so I was familiar with the area.

After receiving the last reported position at around 08:45, my wife and I set off for Basing Wood, parking at the Popley Fields Community Centre. It was a cold and misty morning but it had been raining for the previous few days so the ground was quite wet and muddy in the woods.

I could not receive a signal from the radio sonde until we had traversed to the far norht of Basing Woods and on the edge of fields belonging to the Vyne estate. In the open fields, the ground was hard and frosty.

Since my last attempt to locate a radio sonde, I had equiped my receiver with a GPS module so I could display my distance to the radio sonde and a heading. It was vital I had this as locating it visually was not possible in the mist.

The parachute was located in one field and following the nylon tether showed the radio sonde was located in a different field divided by a large and thick hedge. I had to walk 100m along the hedge to find a suitable place to cross. This involved leaping over a deep ditch and then walking back along the other side of the hedge until I could locate the radio sonde.

As this radio sonde had landed in an open field, the sensor arm was in perfect condition

After recovery of the radio sonde and the parachute, we walked back through Basing Woods on a less muddy route back to the car park. We celebrated the recovery with a coffee and bacon roll at Dunelm about half a kilometer away on the A33.

The track of this radio sonde is recoded on radiosondy.info.