A very easy pickup in a pub car park
I had tracked the balloon for its last hour and watched it approach the ground not far North of my location. It had been raining for a few days and now it was clear and windy so I was hoping for good visibility of the radio sonde and a field that was not too muddy. My wife and I parked on Church Road, near Swallowfield, next to the entrance to All Saints Church. I fired up my my TTGO using rdz_ttgo_sonde software and there was a good strong signal. I had the GPS coordinates but I had not set up the device to use with my phone yet, so I followed the general direction along Church Road heading East.
The direction heading was pointing towards the near end of a large field next to the George and Dragon pub As we passed the pub, the heading to the radio sonde rapidly changed direction so we headed into the pub car park to see if we could access the field from there.
As we headed to the end of the car park to get to the field, there was the radio sonde lying at the foot of a bush next to a car. The tether line stretched over the bush and into the field we had originally targetted. I climbed over a shallow ditch and broken fence to recover the tether line and the parachute a few metres into the field.
Back in the car park one of the pub customers seemed very interested so we explained what we were doing and how we had tracked the balloon. Initially he thought we were employeed of the UK Met Office but we pointed out I was just an interested amateur recovering some electronics and helping to tidy up the countryside, whilst my wife was a long-suffering driver along for the ride. He was facinated and we had a long discussion about how high it had gone and if it would have entered the stratosphere and jetstream. He took a picture of us both with the radio sonde. I have no idea if this picture was ever posted anywhere as I could not find it.
The track of this radio sonde is recorded on radiosonde.info.