Smith Journal – January 2019

009 SMITH JOURNAL

smith stuff

BONNE CHASSE

The Etch-a-Sketch. Braille. Brie. Coq au

vin. Thierry Henry’s feet. These are all

très bien French things – the majority of

which you’re probably familiar with.

A French thing you probably aren’t

familiar with, however, is F5ZV. F5ZV

is a radiosonde hunter. That is, F5ZV

hunts radiosondes: white plastic boxes

that are attached to balloons and sent

(by meteorologists) into not-quite-space

to measure weather – temperatures,

wind, humidity, that kind of thing – and

radio the data back to ground control.

At around 100,000 feet, the balloons burst,

and the little white boxes come floating back

to earth care of their very own parachutes.

That’s where F5ZV – or Roland, as he’s

known to his loved ones – steps in. “My

wife hasn’t always been enthusiastic,” he

admits. “Especially when I would declare,

in the middle of the night, that I was going

out to hunt a radiosonde that was about to

fall on a Swiss mountain. In the winter.”

Not content with the idea of spending his

golden years playing boules, Roland, now

68, took up radiosonde hunting in 2007

on advice from his friend, F1SRX, also

known as Stéphane. (The alphanumeric

monikers are used across ham radio.)

To date, he reckons he’s been on around

300 hunts and found roughly 170 of

the things hiding everwhere from cow

paddocks to suburban car parks.

To get an idea for where a falling radiosonde

might be headed, Roland, who lives about

30 kilometres from the Swiss border,

consults a database that tracks the location

of balloons as they approach bursting height.

Once he’s on the trail, he uses a relatively

unwieldy antenna and radio receiver to listen

out for signals given o by fallen instruments.

He then decodes the signals using another

piece of software called SondeMonitor.

Simple though it may seem, this gear allows

skilled hunters like Roland and Stéphane to

determine the location of radiosondes across

vast distances with near-pinpoint precision.

It’s accessible, too. Roland says that the hobby

is cheap to partake in and doesn’t require

any special technical knowledge. “It gets

you in the open air, and you don’t need to

be very fit or exert a lot of eort to enjoy it.”

By Roland’s estimation, there are hundreds

of radiosonde enthusiasts all over Europe,

and the pursuit likely began in Germany

or England. Despite the niche pursuit’s

relative popularity, he’s playing an active

role in encouraging more participation.

He’s started documenting the history of

radiosonde hunting online, and has even

kicked o a competitive hunting circuit

in a bid to get newcomers hooked.

A typical hunt can last up to six hours, and

Roland – who dons sturdy hiking boots

and packs a lunch before every excursion

• finds it all terribly therapeutic. “It’s play
  for us old children,” he explains in broken
  English. “I’m interested in the machines,
  and there’s so much to be learned from
  the radiosondes. It’s a whole world.” OP

Photographer Vincent Levrat