update 2
note altimeter or barometer or one of the same - measures air pressure
See the black & white image of inside a 1950s radiosonde form the US is similar to the Australian design. note- that the dual voltage dry cell battery looks the same as the Australian made radiosonde used. but the circuits are tag strip electronics typical of the 1950s. the long black antenna wire & large RF tank circuit coil seen at the top. suggests an operating frequency in the HF band.
Publication: The Age
Location: Melbourne, Victoria
Issue Date: Tuesday, April 10, 1973
Page: Page 14
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The Bureau of Meteorology has again commissioned Electronic Engineering to produce radiosondes balloons carrying electronic equipment
to provide weather information. This is the 20th successive year the division has been awarded the contract.
Radiosondes produced at Hunting-dale are also exported, and recent orders have been received from Indonesia and Bangladesh.
Experts in the Electronics Engineering Division are also commissioned to write technical manuals and handbooks.
For the past 20 years it has been the sole supplier of these equipments to the bureau.
The "sonde" is a lightweight equipment housed in a small cardboard box and contains instruments to measure air pressure,
temperature and relative humidity sequentially. The instruments are connected to a small battery-powered UHF? FM radio transmitter which sends continuous readings back to the ground station, from which the equipment is taken aloft by a balloon. When released, the balloons have a diameter of about four ? feet. They rise to heights upwards of 16 miles, transmitting back to the ground stations a complete record of the temperature, humidity and barometric pressure of the air through which they pass.
Also attached to the balloons are devices of balsa wood covered with aluminium foil which reflect radar beams back to earth.
group first launched the manufacture of radiosondes for the Commonwealth Bureau of Meteorology.
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By this means the ground station can track the speed and direction of the winds. Every day the radiosondes are sent aloft at more than 60 points on the Australian continent and at meteorological outposts on Macquarie Island and the Antarctic. In addition to its very high order from the Bureau of Meteorology Electronics Engineering, which builds both the equipments and the ground station, has big export markets.
It is supplying radiosondes to New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
A modified version of the sondes is being used as a weapon in the fight against pollution of the almosphere.
It measures temperature inversion and the picture derived from this indicates the extent of smog and other pollutants at different heights in the atmosphere.
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Ground stations built by Electronics Engineering receive, decode and print out the information sent back by the sondes.
(Photo- A Philips radiosonde is launched by balloon from a meteorological station in Australia.)
The balloons carry the instruments as high as 16 miles into the upper atmosphere, from where they report back on temperature,
humidity and atmospheric pressure.
names used by Electronics Engineering - Philips , Pye , as well as AWA and Astor also a brand of Australian made 1960s TV set's.
assembling TV and radio sets. ':
Another Melbourne plant produces 'Astor brand refrigerators, freezers, dryers and washing machines,
- The Philips-TMC radio division, not ,? ? 'iar from the Clayton Centre, designs ' and produces mobile radios and radio links for 'isolated telephone subscribers Much of this equipment, "oriiinally .designed and manufactured for. the Australian Post (PMG) also finding ready acceptance in export markets particularly Malaysia, Hong Kong 'and Fiji. At Oakleigh South, Philips Vision page photo- radio assembly line at the Centre. (electronics assembly line) ? than 50 different ? of radios aro produced, many of them to suit the ? requirements of major car ? Philips and Pye (car radios)