AFWEX Status, 04 December 2000

Recap:
The DC-8 had a 1840 CST launch and an 8.5 hour flight consisting of a spiral up over the CART site, 4 sets of level legs at 41, 35, 31, 28, and 25kft (ascending and descending, both perpendicular and parallel to the wind), a spiral down over the CART site, and a ~1 hour mission for COAST. The Proteus performed a similar flight pattern with level legs at both 41kft and 54kft. All instruments (aircraft and CART site) operated well and clear sky conditions were encountered for the duration of the mission. An ideal case for the AFWEX objectives.

Weather:
At mid-day, stratus over most of Texas was dissipating and moving west. Possibility of some cirrus moving in from the northwest. In the evening and throughout the flights, severe clear conditions formed over northern Oklahoma. No clouds were detected by LASE during the 8.5 hour flight. Temperatures dropped into the low 20s during the night and the integrated colun water vapor dropped to ~0.6 cm at midnight.

With high probability of precipitation on Tuesday night, Tuesday was called as a hard down day.

Instrument Status/Comments
CART site:
   CART Raman Lidar Normal operations. Tim Tooman arrived today.
   GSFC Raman Lidar Normal operations from ~1830 to ~0145 CST.
   MPI DIAL Normal operations.
   WFF Chilled Mirror Sondes Launches at 1815, 2115, and 0015 CST. 2115 launch had a telemetry failure.
   Other Vaisala launches at 1830, 2130, and 0030 CST.
DC-8:
   LASE Normal operations.
   DLH Normal operations.
   Cryo frost-point/chilled-mirror Normal operations.
   SHIS Normal operations.
   COAST Normal operations. ~1 hr at 8 kft.
   AeroSapient No operations.
Proteus:
   NAST-I Normal operations. Largest single file (1.1 Gb) to date obtained during the flight.
   NAST-M Normal operations.
   FIRSC Normal operations.

Dave Tobin, University of Wisconsin
dave.tobin@ssec.wisc.edu