The next day and the probes were still going into the same direction. Stuttgart launched another probe of schedule at 6:45 AM. At around 9AM, the probe was down on the ground and I lost contact. I jumped into the car to go to the landing area and pick up the coordinates. The probe landed just 2 km from the last one in a forest. My time budget was quite limited as we would have to leave for my sister’s wedding at 11AM. Arriving there, I received the GPS fix all right. Time did not permit to locate the exact landing site or give a recovery attempt a try.
The next day, we returned to Stuttgart, and after collecting the probe launched on June 8th, I went on for the probe from June 9th — hoping it would be as easy to retrieve. In the landing zone. the trees were high, the foliage thick, and I had no luck in locating either the parachute or the probe.
On June 12th, I came back with Claus, my weather probe buddy. We looked around even though it rained heavily. Eventually, Claus located the parachute in a tree and the attached tether curling away to another tree.
What now unfolded is an example of persistence:
On June 13th, we came back with more ideas, a self built slingshot and binoculars. We eventually manged to shoot a mouse ball with an attached tether over the tether of the probe. We then tried to carefully tried to pull it down to no avail — the probe’s tether ripped off.
On June 16th, I came back trying to follow the tether with binoculars to locate the exact whereabouts of the probe. I managed to trace it to the next 2 trees. Then it became dark which ended the quest.
On June 17th, I restarted the attempted to find the probe. I found the tether using the binoculars on one more tree — I was pretty sure the probe would be on this tree, even though I could not located within the foliage.
Claus came back a couple of times without me and spotted the thread on the next tree. On July 17th, the both of us returned. We able to spot the thread on the tree where Claus had last seen it, but not beyond. It is very close to the position which I had received on June 9th. The thread was floating in the wind which indicates that it is ripped.
Not sure how to proceed from here. Maybe will just have to wait until autumn and check again after the leaves will have fallen off ( Also agent orange might be a tool of choice :-)) The most obvious choice is to just leave it there …
