Photo

Up, Up, and Away

Meet the obsessive hunters chasing weather balloons all over Europe.
Image may contain Balloon and Ball
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    When Roland—or “F5ZV,” as he’s known on ham radio—left his job in Belfort, France a decade ago, he devoted his newfound leisure to a far more peculiar hobby: hunting radiosondes, data-collecting plastic boxes that meteorologists send into the sky on weather balloons.
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    VINCENT LEVRAT
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    Roland began using a radio receiver and antenna to track them to the rooftops, parking lots, and random cow pastures where they land. "He was completely obsessed," says Swiss photographer Vincent Levrat, who documented the chase. "He would wake up at night just to hunt."
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    VINCENT LEVRAT
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    Levrat lives in the Swiss city of Lausanne, just 45 minutes away from an aerological survey station in Payerne that launches balloons twice a day. (Pictured is test equipment for checking probes before flight.)
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    Roland, here wandering the Chasseral in Switzerland trying to get a signal, estimates that there are hundreds of other radiosonde hunters across Europe who monitor launch schedules for weather station balloons.
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    An antenna and radio receiver tuned to the probe's frequency lets them listen to its blips and beeps, which they decode with the computer program SondeMonitor.
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    VINCENT LEVRAT
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    An employee at the Payerne aerological station holds a balloon he will soon attach to a probe.
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    A radiosonde floats above Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland. This image was captured with a GoPro on another radiosonde, tethered to the same balloon.
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    VINCENT LEVRAT
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    A probe with its electronics on display.
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    Somewhere around 100,000 feet, the balloons burst, and the radiosondes parachute back to earth. Hunters use software called Balloon Track to predict the general area where a radiosonde might land.
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    Levrat’s playful photographs capture a sweeping view of the hunt—from the radiosondes to Roland, dwarfed by his spinning antenna as he roams the landscape, thoroughly enjoying his retirement.
Laura Mallonee is a writer for WIRED covering photography. ... Read More
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