A warm summer's day and a chat with a farmer
Having not seen much land near me for a while, early reception of this radio sonde looked like it would land just east of Winchester.
The last reported position was near the Winchester Science Center but it was still 940m up. It looked like there was parking at Cheesefoot Head so I suggested to my wife a drive out to Winchester followed by coffee and cake at New Alresford. The chase was afoot, a Cheesefoot, sorry. I checked an OS map for the area and the field where it probably landed was bordered by two public footpaths.
After parking, there was a strong signal from the sonde and I connected my phone to my receiver, then it was just a case of following the edge of the field until I was in about 100m. There was a crop I had not seen before in the field so I stuck to the tractor tramlines as much as possible to avoid damaging the crop. The long nylon tether string was tangled up in the crop so it took a few minutes to disentangle it and wind it all in and collect the parachute.
Whilst recovering the radio sonde, I noticed two farmers were taking an interest in what I was doing. Once I was back on the footpath, we talked to them. They were not annoyed about seeing me in their field but they were interested in what I was doing because they said they see very few walkers in fields. I explained I was recovering a radio sonde, that it is a weather ballon and I like to tidy up the electronics if they land near me. They had a look at the length of nylon cord and said they would be very unhappy if that was wrapped around a combine harvester. I said I did it mostly so the local wildlife and livestock would not eat it or become entangled.
We chatted some more about the field I had crossed. It was linseed. Apparently it is a valuable cash crop. I learned how to recognise linseed and two farmers learned about weather balloons. As one of the farmers said, "every day is a school day".
It was now just a long walk back to the car and a short drive to Alresford for coffee and cake.
The track of this radio sonde is recorded on radiosonde.info.