Gabi, Greg, VK5ZGY, and I looked at the prediction for the weather sonde for 11/10/18 and decided that it would be an easy one to recover.
On the morning of Thursday the 11th Gabi, Greg and I jumped in the car armed with smart phones and an ipad with the idea of tracking the weather sonde for the morning.
We had a few issues on both the ipad and the phone with the website not loading the data for our local sonde. A quick trip home later to collect the laptop ensued. The problem was quickly sorted with Tom, VK5EE advising us to clear out the search bar and press enter.
This resulted in Greg getting the ipad working as well.
Because we were only tracking the sonde via the webpage we had to be sure that the receiving stations, (VK5KET and VK5TA), could always hear the sonde and that we had 3G coverage.
The Sonde finished up landing in an open grassy paddock in the Burrungule area. It was a very easy recovery of the sonde as we had a visual from 3000mts. We were able to watch the sonde land in a clear paddock just 50 metres from the car. (using the binoculars of course).
It was amazing how easily we could see the sonde from such a high altitude. We had to drive around the block, (a very big block at that), to gain access to the farm house to ask permission to enter the paddock. The owners granted permission without fuss. A quick walk and we found the sonde and proceeded to pack it up.
This is just the second sonde I have collected and the first for Gabi and Greg. It was interesting morning and hope to collect more as time and weather permits.
Charles. VK5HD