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As both Keanu and Jason were not yet involved in any (successful) ozone probe hunt, there was a need to change this. Today the opportunity was given, as Uccle should land somewhere around Cologne. Keanu picked me up at 13:30, and after we had collected Jason, we went to Cologne. Unfortunately the balloon burst already with approx. 31,500 m height, so that the landing shifted to northeast. But since the parachute worked well, everything pointed to a landing between Bedburg (Erft) and Niederaussem.

Unfortunately ON-1 was and is down since this morning, so that no more automatic predictions could be made during the landing approach. In addition, the probe made a turn to the south during the final approach, which made the guidance more difficult. The SDR with loose contact, the RS-41 was more faint than expected (I’m used to better results with the 433 MHz magnetic base antenna) and the insensitive decoding behavior of the RS41 tracker did the rest. Nevertheless, we managed to catch a glimpse of the parachute during the landing approach, the first sonde I saw in the air before landing (Yeah!)

The landing place could not have been more favorable. It was a gas station, the probe stood, like beside it as it belonged there, the parachute and balloon remainings were lying on the roof. The parking lot was right in front of it. No drive-in in the classic sense, but close to it.

On the way back we stopped at P2950443 from 26.02.19 in Essen, which had landed very close on a nursery ground. Unfortunately every trace of her was missing after six days.

At the end the descent speed was below 4 m/s, although the parachute did not open quite perfectly. Although the sonde has an older OIF board from 2016, this seems to be only the second use, at least in this case. The crossed out date I reckon to be 23.01.19, this seemed to be a faulty start, because there was a re-start on 24.01.. For an entry as Found this is too little for me. Up to now I did not know the Safety from normal probe cord and cardboard, which was knotted to the cord. Oh, what have I missed this unique Uccle smell made of balloon residue, water battery and hemp cord. Talking about batteries: the water battery has the date of manufacture 20.01.15, so it is a newer batch than my last one and the heating battery is an Ultralife this time, like the motor batteries from De Bilt.

On 27.02. the weather looked favourable for the lunchtime sonde from Essen, everything hinted at a landing in a narrower radius around Gummersbach. So I made an appointment with Keanu around 13:15 o’clock to make a new attempt to observe the landing of a probe. But from the beginning I had to fight with problems. wetterson.de was partly down, the RS41 tracker didn’t like decoding on the MacBook at first and the USB extension for the SDR had a loose contact, so that the huge stick, which was now plugged directly into the USB socket, made no reliable contact.

Somehow I got everything going, and one bright spot was that the 6 m pole, which I had ordered from wimo, was already in the delivery van. So I quickly rebuilt the prototype for the hot wire cutter, which is supposed to be attached to the quadrocopter, for operation on a power bank with 5 m supply cable, and was all the more pleased that the package arrived just before one o’clock. To be on the safe side I threw a coat hanger hook and Gaffa into the backpack.

Unfortunately the rig had an extraordinarily good parachute, so that the sonde sailed as far as Morsbach, where we barely missed the landing in a forest. We fought our way up a steep hill about 150 m, only to find out that the parachute was in unreachable height and the probe was about 3,50 m high. We went back to the car to get the pole. When I unpacked the disappointmentfollowed soon: A soldering point on the hot wire cutter had come loose because I had just thrown it into my backpack. So the coat hanger hook had its chance, even with him the rescue succeeded. The sonde went into the transport box and on went the journey.

Somehow I woke up early on Saturday morning and was half lying on my iPad, where I must have fallen asleep. Before I put it away, I did what every Millenial does instinctively in half sleep: I looked at my notifications. The sonde alarm had gone off, the night sonde from Essen had landed in Meckenheim. Somehow I dozed off again, and after my unsuccessful hunts yesterday I dreamed that this probe had been taken by an unknown sonde hunter.

When I woke up I was astonished that there was no report yet, because I couldn’t quite tell the difference between dream and reality at this point. When I had caught myself, I checked the situation again and the village, in front of whose windmill the sonde was to lie in the grass, was quite easily accessible. On the way back, one could perhaps collect the Essen midday probe, which was supposed to come down between Brühl and Euskirchen.

Said, done. The local RB25 brought me to Cologne, after a short stop at McDonalds (the breakfast had only consisted of a chocolate bar due to lack of time) I continued with the RB26 to Bonn Bad-Godesberg. Normally I am full of praise for the guidance system of the German railway, which rarely disappointed me with short changeover times in unknown stations. But here someone came up with the grandiose idea to write “BUS” without any further specification, e.g. after lines, in the direction of both exits of the underpass. Fortunately I guessed correctly and caught the bus to Villip.

There I went up the way to the mill, but saw nothing on the meadow, which was next to my footpath in the landing corridor. At the top there was a paddock for horses. In the whole landing area there were no clues, only something white distributed in the grass, which looked like bird feathers on closer inspection. The inhabitants of the mill did not open even after ringing the bell several times. I wanted to drop a note, but had to find out that I didn’t have a notepad with me. Soon a ready-made flyer will be prepared for those instances, for such things you always need the right impulse. I still had time, so I looked again from the other side of the adjacent row of houses, and rang the doorbell one last time at the mill, before I decided in accordance to the flight of the noon sonde, which was about to burst, not to go to Euskirchen, but back to Bonn. Still in the bus the balloon burst and a landing between Hürth and the south of Cologne seemed possible. The Rhine side was still unclear. After the RB26 had been cancelled for no reason and without an announcement, I drove back on the left bank of the Rhine with the RB48 and was in good company with Cologne fans who wanted to attend the FCs home match and premature carnivalists.

From Cologne West I went via Neumarkt to Poll by tram. The sonde had landed in Salmstraße, either on the street itself or, more likely, in the gardens behind it. When I arrived about an hour after landing, there was no signal. There was nothing to see on the road itself. A resident of the apartment buildings to which the gardens belonged allowed me to enter and another neighbour led me through the gardens. No trace of a sonde landing. A landing behind the houses on the other side of the street seemed very unlikely to me and I had to hurry to get the next train home. So I went frustrated on the way home, didn’t reaching the train either, because the tram back was late. If only I had listened to my premonition and hadn’t started at all.

EDIT: As it turned out, Nils from Bonn apparently found both probes after me, both of which flew more than twice as far as in my prediction. The midday probe also had a frequency drift up to 411 MHz, which I find very surprising.

Originally all Meppen sondes should have landed today between Cologne and Duisburg, tendency south to north. The first sonde had a reasonable parachute and landed on the teacher parking lot of the Holweide Secondary School in the west of Cologne. I took the opportunity and made my way. Arrived there with regional train and tram immediately the first joyful surprise: The probe still transmitted. So off I went to the school. Already from a distance I saw that there was a construction site, and also the parachute and balloon remains, which hung in a tree over a vehicle. I entered the parking lot and was immediately instructed by an employee of the tree nursery, who was supposed to trim the trees, and who was on site with a lifting platform. A short search revealed that the sonde was hanging two rows further in the tree. I went back to the team from the nursery who offered to get the probe out of the tree for me. Unfortunately they couldn’t get the parachute, because there was a car parked under it.

Afterwards I tried to hunt the next two sondes, but had to turn around after half the drive and break off. The morning sonde landed behind Bad Münstereifel in the forest with a great parachute, no way to reach it with public transport. And the noon probe landed, due to lack of wind, in Essen on a motorway exit, probably pretty much the only place where one does not get as a pedestrian at all.

But at least one of three, but that shows how difficult the Meppen hattrick is here, even with balloons and parachutes that don’t fall out of expectation and a landing corridor that is completely within the Rhine area, which is quite accessible by public transport.

The Essen sondes have a preference for trees, of four finds I could only recover two completely. With P2740382, the night probe from 15.02., which had landed very close to me between Wiehl and Drabenderhöhe, it could have been both according to prediction.

On Saturday it went on cold search, after I had been at the hairdresser. The landing place was quite remote, I took a bus, a scheduled taxi, which turned out to be a black sprinter with a pensioner steering, and the last two kilometers by foot, which was no problem in bright sunshine and temperatures of about twenty degrees. The landing site was visible from the road, the big balloon remainings on the meadow with the parachute still folded, the sonde hung a few decimetres high over a deciduous tree.

After the set was recovered, I went back, and decided to walk the 3.5 km to Bielstein, where there is service every half hour. During the waiting time I went to the bakery to get some eclairs for the whole family, so that nothing stood in the way of Saturday afternoon coffee after my return.