How close was that one?
I just happended to notice this radio sonde on my receiver just before I walked up to my local supermarket. The predicted landing site was very variable. Up until the predicted burst point, it was landing somewhere near Andover. The balloon continued to climb well past the predicted burst point so the predicted landing site would be way over on the east side of London, a long way from my location. For the next few minutes the prediction varied quite considerably so I went to the supermarket deciding I would see where it would landed when I returned.
On returning home, I was surprised to discover it had landed 3km from my location. In fact, the supermarket was about half way between my location and the landing site, so I could have just kept walking beyond the supermarket to the landing location as quickly as walking home. That did not happen, so my wife drove the car along a narrow country road where I picked up the signal from the radio sonde. Whilst she sat in the car waiting, I walked along a footpath across grass fields to the landing site. There were a few horses in fenced off areas but nowhere near my path. I always like to cause as little disturbance as possible when I am recovering radio sondes.
As I had almost finished recovering the radio sonde, I noticed a familiar face at a gate on the other side of the field. After I had recovered the sonde and associated attachments, I walked over to the gate for a chat. We spoke about the recent radio sondes and which he had recovered. As we were chatting for a while, I sent a text to my wife to let her know I was chatting and had not fallen over or down a railway enbankment. The text reply I received was "did you get there first?".
The walk back was much the same as the walk there except the wind had picked up and it was raining more heavily. I must have had the wind to my back on the way to the landing site because I noticed now the rain and strong wind in my face. I was happy to get back to a nice warm car.
Quite a bit of the balloon came down with the parachute and I noticed writing on it. After letting the balloon material dry out and applying my jigsaw skills, I examined the writing to find it said, "HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE". My fellow radio sonde hunter had mentioned to me that hydrogen was being used in the balloons instead of helium which they had been using previously.
As this radio sonde landed only 3km from my location, it seemed right that I would be the one to recover it.
The track of this radio sonde is recoded on radiosondy.info.