Man of Honour
- Joined
- 17 Nov 2003
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- 36,746
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- Southampton, UK
I take it the box is still MIA?
Lost Weather Balloon!
- Thread starter GeForce
- Start date
Burnsy, yes it is 
We've notified numerous amateur radio clubs in the area, and I'm trying to get through to Lincolnshire police.
If anyone on this forum is around the area, the £50 reward for finding it still stands of course.
We've notified numerous amateur radio clubs in the area, and I'm trying to get through to Lincolnshire police.
If anyone on this forum is around the area, the £50 reward for finding it still stands of course.
Yesterday morning (Sunday 26/04/09) at around 10:10 I was walking the dog in Southey Woods, about 6 miles NW of Peterborough city centre when two Islander-type aeroplanes flew over. I trained my binoculars on them but noticed something else high above them. It was a crescent shape like a small moon which was barely moving. I later concluded it was a weather balloon or suchlike. I did a Google search to see if anyone else had spotted one, which is how I arrived at your website. Could this be your balloon? I would have thought that in the elapsed time the wind speed/direction would have taken it to Norway by now. Perhaps this was someone else’s balloon. RAF Wittering or the parachuting club at Sibson or the two aeroplanes could all have released it I suppose. Any ideas? Or was it a UFO after all?Evening guys
£50 reward
We launched a weather balloon today with an electronic radio communications payload on board. Unfortunately we lost it somewhere around the Lincoln area.
It could be as far north as S****horpe (scun-thorpe - word filter!), as far south as Peterborough, or could be somewhere around Nottingham.
If any of you have PMR446 walkie-talkies (8 channels), could you please spare a couple of minutes and help us!
Tune it to channel 5.
Stand at an open window as high as possible.
Listen for modem-type noises. They will be about 2 seconds in length and once per minute.
Even if you don't hear anything please post back, so we know where it isn't.
Would be extremely grateful if a few people around there could do this!
Thanks a lot,
Jon
Soldato
- Joined
- 22 Oct 2004
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- 9,086
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- Berkland
lol, its too good to be true surely! lol
Quick update guys, picture so you can easily i.d it
Awesome
Hope you find it mate, and big lol @ S****horpe
This may be a little late now but I'm wondering if it will be worth contacting local radio stations and local TV news. They like stories like this and it may jog some peoples memories and with a reward it may widen the search.
Good luck with finding it.
Good luck with finding it.
Get in touch with BBC Look North which is the most popular local news program for Yorkshire/Lincolnshire.
If they do a story on it there'll be a lot of people on the look out for it, and you never know, they might have already been contacted by someone who's found it.
If they do a story on it there'll be a lot of people on the look out for it, and you never know, they might have already been contacted by someone who's found it.
Permabanned
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I've got an amateur radio multi-band transceiver, but it will be useless as i can pickup a long distance, so i won't bother trying to find it as it will only widen your search 
I've got an amateur radio multi-band transceiver, but it will be useless as i can pickup a long distance, so i won't bother trying to find it as it will only widen your search
Doesn't the stuff transmitting on that frequency only transmit to a small area though?
Maybe worth a shot.
Permabanned
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well yes, it is also dependant on the power the thing is outputting, but i have a massive aerial on my roof almost perfectly tuned for the 70cm band so it would still pickup signals from quite some distance.
still useful though, at least they would know it is still transmitting.
What antenna/kit do you have, are you a radio amateur?
Will get onto that right now, thank you
Lol, random question but how did you intend to actually get the balloon back? Ow was this your intention all along?
Good luck finding it though, make sure you post some pictures up of what it shot WHEN you find it.
We tracked the balloon for about 2 hours during its flight, and we were thus hopeful we could track it all the way to its landing site. It was only the sudden movement eastwards that prevented this.
We did not exactly expect to be able to recover the payload straight away, but we knew it would be possible given favourable conditions.
WHEN we find it, I'll certainly post lots of pics!
I've got an amateur radio multi-band transceiver, but it will be useless as i can pickup a long distance, so i won't bother trying to find it as it will only widen your search
Hi mate, if you could listen anyway, we'd be very grateful!
446.05625 MHz FM - Channel 5 PMR446 - Modem type noises once a minute.
433.920 Mhz AM - Serial data once every 10 seconds, can be heard on an FM set too.
Hi mate, firstly I'd like to thank you for taking the time to register and post.
Unfortunately the likelihood of that being our payload is almost 0. We are 99% sure the payload had landed by 1700BST on Saturday 25/04/09, and there is no way it could have still been airborne the day after.
At the last known position it was descending around 5000 ft/min, so it would have hit the ground shortly after.
The location is certainly a possible landing site, although predictions say further north would be more likely.
