ER-2 Flight: 96107

Date: April 23, 1996

Mission: Remote sensing of lee waves clouds.

Mission Objectives

Observe wave clouds over the front range and contrails during overpass of the NOAA-14 satellite.

Flight Summary

Take-off time was 1730 UTC and landing 2130 UTC. ER-2 flew to approximately 41:22N 106:19W and arrived at approximately 1839 UTC. Mission was to overfly mountain wave clouds and contrails in and out of the principal plane of the sun. Pilot was to visually locate the clouds. Coorindate flight track with ground track of the NOAA-14 satellite between 2031 and 2033 UTC. Track of satellite was approximately 40:36:20N 107:18:00W; 41:19.5N 107:34.8N; 41:59:51 107:48:00W; 42:39:09 108:00:00.

Denver did not give clearance to turn the lidar on until 1827 UTC.

Highlights

Flew parallel to NOAA-14 track while south of Denver.

Instrument Status

• MODIS Airborne Simulator (MAS): Operated. Good data collected.
• Cloud Aerosol Lidar System (CALS): Operated. Good data collected.
• High-Resolution Interferometer Sounder (HIS): Operated. Good data collected in bands 1 and 2. Doubled dwell time of nadir view between calibration cylces.
• Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer(MIR): Operated. Good data collected.
• Tilt Scan CCD Camera (TSCC): Operated. Images collected.
• Radiation Measuring System (RAMS): Operated. Good data collected.
• RC-10 Camera: Operated (black and white visible film- 6 inch lens).

Additional Pilot Notes: ER-2 flew over a long cirrus cloud that extended for about 100 mi. downwind of near Larimer. This cirrus appeared to be rolling and turbulent. Commercial aircraft reported wave clouds. Could visually see roll clouds out side cockpit window, put could not see them when over the clouds due to cirrus above of the wave clouds. No persistant contrails, ER-2 overflew some non persistant contrails. Flew south of Denver to get contrails and roll clouds. Flew satellite overpass while south of Denver.