Abseiling Beside the Road

#4 Essen – Kierspe
Vaisala RS41-SGP / P3510106 / 18.10.2018 1200Z
🔗 sondehub.org tinker sonde
🔗 radiosondy.info individual transport

The day before my holiday trip to England, Essen had another flight who looked nice. Together with flynamic we tried to observe the sonde during it’ s landing. We were there in time, only to be one road too far at the crucial moment: I had not noticed that Kierspe is 150 m higher than Gummersbach.

A little later we were at the landing site, which was supposed to be a few meters beside the main road. Parachute and balloon remainings were lying on the road and were overrun at second intervals. Fast action was asked, flynamic stopped beside the landing site at a parking bay, I jumped out and recovered parachute and balloon remainings of the road. After everything was secured, we made our way to the sonde, which turned out to be hanging in a deciduous tree at some height. Shaking it all didn’t help. At first I wanted to throw the string down the embankment of the road to get it closer to the probe, but it turned out that after a bit of shaking it was possible to abseil the sonde. Unfortunately the temperature sensor broke. Back in the car I noticed that Google Maps showed slow traffic at the spot where I had been standing on the road for a few minutes. But we were the ones who had eliminated the traffic obstacle!