Balloonfoxhunt 2017 report from the north

Well, not a great show. Although the organisation did their best to build in a surprise element. This year it was unknown were the balloon would start so a prediction could not be calculated at all. It would be a real foxhunt and in the end due to technical problems it was even a foxhunt for the organisation. However, the wind was south-west and I'm living in the opposite direction so there was a good chance the balloon would head my way. I started listening late and my first reception was in the car on my baofeng HT. It occured to me that I could only hear a weak tone of a beacon and no transponder although this year there would only be a transponder? Strange! It seems there was a technical problem with the receiving part of the transponder on 70cm, so almost no one had the ability to work via the balloon, only a few stations with stacked yagis and power had some luck. For me that was a big downer. However, remember my efforts to try a QSO on the 70cm PI2NOS repeater without luck in 2015? Well it seems the repeater has better ears this time and I worked the headquarters of the balloon organisation to let them know I received the ballon at that moment with S9+. So unfortunate the transponder was not working....

At the end the balloon was hunted down in Germany near the city of Munster.

More info at: https://www.ballonvossenjacht.nl/