WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

After lockdown obviously.

Anyone interested in hunting and retrieving the radiosondes launched from Perth Airport twice a day? The trouble is the majority of them are currently landing in the bushland in the hills. Most of the roads near by are dirt roads and you'd need a 4x4 to access, and I don't have one unfortunately. So if anyone wants to go hunting, let me know.



You can view the last few days of launches here, the site is very slow so be patient.
https://tracker.sondehub.org/

Thanks for posting this info. It wasn't something I was aware of and its very interesting.

The tracker site is very good and I'm tracking one as I type that will be landing sometime soon somewhere east of Beverley.

It looks as if the balloons are launched at approx 0715hrs/1915hrs.........is that about right?

What receiving kit are you using to track and hunt?

Not personally in a position to go hunting but thanks for posting!!

HI
Yes, launches seem to happen around 0715hrs/1915hrs or +15 minutes depending on air traffic from what I've seen.

To track and chase I've used the radiosonde_auto_rx and chasemapper on a pi, but any Linux distro would work a laptop or NUC maybe.

https://github.com/projecthorus/radiosonde_auto_rx

There is also RS41 tracker that connects to SDR Sharp using a plugin and runs on Windows. It has a little more info provided such as the countdown timer for deactivation of the sonde.

http://escursioni.altervista.org/Radiosonde/

My next step is to build a better antenna, using a discone at the moment not idea and it's not very high off the ground.

Cheers for that macca

Its certainly an interesting area of the radio hobby.

Good luck upgrading your gear.

Got one. Check the post in the pictures forum.