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Author Topic: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde  (Read 3840 times)

Offline Josh

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We do not encourage any radio operations contrary to regulations.

Offline flexoman61

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Re: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2019, 2146 UTC »
Good video Josh, Thanks.
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Matt285

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Re: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2019, 2245 UTC »
I spend a lot of time in the woods and have been fortunate enough to have find Two of them over the years randomly. Not much to them, but fun to dissect. The guys I work with were really fascinated with them also.

Offline Josh

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Re: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde
« Reply #3 on: June 13, 2019, 2323 UTC »
Props to all who venture forth into the wild, me, I'd get bit by some snake(s), covered in fleas and ticks, and etc. As much as I'd like to harvest me one of them sondes, I'm safer here by the radio.
We do not encourage any radio operations contrary to regulations.

Matt285

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Re: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde
« Reply #4 on: June 14, 2019, 0137 UTC »
Both of the ones I found were hanging by their parachute stuck in a tree. When I found the first One I had no idea what it was.

Offline domestos

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Offline Pigmeat

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Re: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde
« Reply #6 on: July 01, 2019, 0555 UTC »
I saw a bunch of boys and teenagers get dragged through a cow pasture by one in the summer of 1968. Talk about a failure in judgement! At least most of them had the sense to let go before they hit a barbed wire fence and headed into the woods.

NOAA and the NWS used to ask that people either contact them about the location or bring the radiosonde in those days.

Offline ChrisSmolinski

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Re: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde
« Reply #7 on: July 01, 2019, 1322 UTC »
NOAA and the NWS used to ask that people either contact them about the location or bring the radiosonde in those days.

They still take them back so they can be refurbished and re-used, but most trackers keep them. It's the perfect QSL.
Chris Smolinski
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Offline Pigmeat

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Re: How to track & recover a NWS weather balloon & radiosonde
« Reply #8 on: July 01, 2019, 2323 UTC »
That balloon still had a lot of lift even though it was dragging it's tether at about seven feet above the ground. That bunch had a load of fun riding that balloon down the hill and across the pasture. If the wind hadn't shifted they would've ended up on a state   highway and tangled in power and phone lines.

I didn't know the Govt. still took the radiosonde's back?

 

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