As part of our research programme during the Arctic Ocean 2016 expedition we were planning to launch meteorological radiosondes every six hours, with the data being used both for research and sent to the EUMETNET service for use in initialising forecast models. Unfortunately, the receiver of the sounding system failed at the beginning of our expedition.

As an enthusiastic amateur radio operator I had some ideas and knowledge about how to receive the VHF signal from the sondes and how to decode it with a ordinary computer sound card and special software. After hard work and support from my collegues, a new setup was built and finally we could launch the first radiosonde! The met group could receive a signal to 21,000 m and are now able to decode it.

A successful mission until now and we are starting to do a schedule to launch a radiosonde every six hours. Special thanks to the COAA software development team and my friend Klaus Bartsch, who supported us from home to get this running.