Sunday was much warmer, drier and sunnier than Saturday. Unfortunately it was not really windy enough for the “Houston Plume” flight which was abandoned when little pollution could be detected downwind of the city. (The aircraft had already landed at Ellington Field before any of the ground team realised that all was not well.) However, some useful experience of operating in the area was gained.
Pirouettes on the ground were performed for the Broad Band Radiometers.
The HF radio coverage is poor, especially at low levels, and ATC had advised use of the SATCOM phone, but we were unable to get the phone to work either to or from the aircraft.
The Texan controllers had some problems with the call sign “METMAN”. Mexico is more familiar than meteorology to the Lone Star state and all flights are expected to have a number.
PCASP did not work.
There was a mysterious problem with the communications between the Dry Nephelometer and the laptop which will call into question the reliability of calibration unless it is remedied soon.
The trail of hard caps instead of the hotter, heavier and more clumsy helmets was a great success. Hopefully these can become standard equipment at the earliest opportunity.
A review of the latest forecast after Sunday’s flight caused the Oklahoma detachment idea to be abandoned (for next week at least). The prospects of unsuitable conditions on Tuesday and Wednesday caused a return to Plan A - an Oklahoma AQUA pass refuel flight on Monday returning to base in Houston in the evening.
A Sunday night comms failure at BADC caused delays updating the FAAM web site and uploading data.
Joint
Airborne IASI Validation Experiment (JAIVEx) at UW-Madison SSEC/CIMSS
