Radiosondes and weather balloons in New Zealand

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scottjpalmer

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#323577 17-Dec-2025 11:47

I'm pretty surprised to find there isn't a thread here dedicated to radiosondes and weather balloons in New Zealand. There were a string of posts referencing them in the WTF thread but nothing else I can find.

Has anyone found one? Does anyone use https://sondehub.org/ to track them?

I have a feeder station at home, similar to an ADS-B feeder. I've retrieved 15 or so radiosondes and bits of shredded balloon from around Wairarapa and Wellington over the last couple of years.

I've recently started a new Facebook group for enthusiasts to congregate and for the general public to post their finds. The old one was a page not a group so only the owner could post to it and he now lives in Australia.

TerminalGuidance

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#3446935 24-Dec-2025 13:56

Hi Scott

I was tipped off to your post so thought I’d drop in and say gidday. I’m the receiver in Paraparaumu you will have seen pop up on Sondehub in the last few months.

I enjoy watching the auto dispenser at Metservice do its work at lunch time every now and then so I bought a TTGO board on a whim and made my own 1/4 wave antenna. It’s just sitting in a box in my lounge at the moment and it’s incredible how well it hears the sonde in such a suboptimal setting; the low power RF protocols are black magic to me! Do you have a particularly capable antenna, great location, both? You collect a lot of packets!

Hoping to chase down a sonde one day for fun with the kids but as you’re well aware the geography and prevailing winds through most of the year (and having a job, boo) don’t make that particularly easy on this side of the island.

Thanks for the post and link to the group.

Dave

Jase2985

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#3446949 24-Dec-2025 16:40

MetService uses weather balloons (radiosondes) launched twice daily from Whenuapai, Paraparaumu, and Invercargill at 11:00 AM and 11:00 PM New Zealand Time (NZT).

I, on occasion, have launched weather balloons at work to get wind layers, along with temp and humidity readings. We use the Viasala MW51 system, with RS41 Radiosondes. Its quite a neat wee system and very interesting to see the change in weather profile for such a small increase in vertical distance.

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#3446955 24-Dec-2025 16:59

windy.com is a good resource also to look at Balloon Flights where you can see the actual flight path incl the graph of data collected

Balloons used to be launched from Raoul Island also before the pandemic

TerminalGuidance

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#3446980 24-Dec-2025 20:12

Jase2985:

MetService uses weather balloons (radiosondes) launched twice daily from Whenuapai, Paraparaumu, and Invercargill at 11:00 AM and 11:00 PM New Zealand Time (NZT).

There’s a little more behind the launch time: the balloons are launched to make a target altitude at the ‘synoptic time’ of 0000 and 1200 UTC. In practice that means Paraparaumu launching at about 1115 & 2315 UTC (1115 & 2315 NZST or 1215 & 0015 NZDT). That lead time will vary a bit by station.

Jase2985:

I, on occasion, have launched weather balloons at work to get wind layers, along with temp and humidity readings. We use the Viasala MW51 system, with RS41 Radiosondes. Its quite a neat wee system and very interesting to see the change in weather profile for such a small increase in vertical distance.

If you still do this and are allowed to share it would be neat to know frequency (or range) and rough location to see if anyone can track one of your launches!

shanes

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#3446982 24-Dec-2025 20:38

scottjpalmer: I'm pretty surprised to find there isn't a thread here dedicated to radiosondes and weather balloons in New Zealand. There were a string of posts referencing them in the ... thread but nothing else I can find.

Has anyone found one? Does anyone use https://sondehub.org/ to track them?

I have a feeder station at home, similar to an ADS-B feeder. I've retrieved 15 or so radiosondes and bits of shredded balloon from around Wairarapa and Wellington over the last couple of years.

I've recently started a new Facebook group for enthusiasts to congregate and for the general public to post their finds. The old one was a page not a group so only the owner could post to it and he now lives in Australia.

I've just setup a feeder station in Masterton, just trying to sort an antenna, pity it's so close to you :) but every bit of coverage helps...

I became interested in this after your comment in the SDR thread a few weeks back, pretty surprised with the lack of feeders.

Jase2985

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#3446983 24-Dec-2025 20:44

They (RS41-SG) are all in the 400.15 – 406 MHz range, but we generally use the lowest frequency.

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#3447174 25-Dec-2025 21:54

Are you able to use the same SDR and Pi to feed Sondehub and ADS-B?

I use readsb and tar1090, but interested to know if I can reuse vs run another full setup.

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Oblivian

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#3447226 26-Dec-2025 08:12

2nd stick needed. Generally only able to monitor one frequency at a time as the software takes control to manage it..

scottjpalmer

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#3447239 26-Dec-2025 09:38

@TerminalGuidance:
Hi Scott

. . .

Hi Dave, welcome. Yes I had seen your station pop up. Nice home made antenna!

I've been meaning to head up your way to watch a launch but haven't yet.

I got an antenna from https://vinnant.sk/ along with an ADS-B one. Both mounted on hockey sticks on my roof in the middle of the Wairarapa valley. I see radiosondes down to Christchurch and up to Mahia but only at their higher altitudes.

I use an Uputronics amp/filter then through a TV splitter to 2x RTL-SDR Blog sticks so I can receive 2 radiosondes simultaneously. I've got 3 TTGO boards as well for temporary portable use.

I bought an Airspy R2 on their Black Friday special but I'm yet to get that going for essentially unlimited number of simultaneous radiosondes receive.

My whole setup is in the process of being moved and changed, this is present temporary state.

This 403 amp filter will soon be up for grabs if anyone is interested.

scottjpalmer

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#3447240 26-Dec-2025 09:43

@shanes:
. . .

Hi Shane, welcome! I had seen your station pop up as well, the more the merrier :-) See my post above for details of my setup.

scottjpalmer

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#3447241 26-Dec-2025 09:44

Oblivian:
2nd stick needed. Generally only able to monitor one frequency at a time as the software takes control to manage it..

Yep, same Pi is ok though. See my photo above, all 3 sticks plug into same Pi.

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aj6828

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#3447357 26-Dec-2025 18:57

Interesting, I gave a ADS-B feeder and a high-gain antenna with a raspberry pi getting flight tracker data to multiple sources ..

keen to track weather baloons where do i start haha

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scottjpalmer

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#3447359 26-Dec-2025 19:19

aj6828:
Interesting, I gave a ADS-B feeder and a high-gain antenna with a raspberry pi getting flight tracker data to multiple sources ..

keen to track weather baloons where do i start haha

https://github.com/projecthorus/radiosonde_auto_rx is the go for Pi based.

https://github.com/dl9rdz/rdz_ttgo_sonde for self contained portable TTGO based