Mission Summary
20080831N1 Aircraft 49RF
Gustav flight 2008

Aircraft Crew (49RF)
Aircraft CommanderMichele Finn
PilotsWill Odell
Gregg Glover
Flight DirectorPaul Flaherty
AVAPSJim Roles
Jorge Delgado
Data SystemChuck Rasco
Dropsonde ScientistsJason Dunion
John Kaplan

Mission Plan :

NOAA 49RF will fly a Synoptic Surveillance Mission around Hurricane Gustav. The G-IV will leave MacDill AFB at 0530 UTC and recover at MacDill at 1330 UTC.The flight track will take the G-IV on a clockwise circumnavigation of the TC and is shown in Fig. 1, along with the 29 GPS dropsonde points.


Fig. 1: Flight track (blue line) for Synoptic Surveillance mission 080831N1. The GPS dropsonde points (29 total) are indicated by numbered circles.

Synoptic Surveillance
MISSION PLAN
Gustav

National Hurricane Center: August 29, 2008 4:11:59 PM
Aircraft: N49RF
Altitude: FL410-450
Proposed takeoff: 31/0530Z
DROP
#
LAT
(d m)
LON
(d m)
TIME
(h mm)
128 00-79 000:27
228 00-77 000:42
326 00-76 001:01
426 00-78 001:16
525 36-83 001:55
623 26-83 012:13
721 14-83 482:32
821 23-85 022:42
921 23-86 222:52
1021 57-87 343:03
1123 00-88 243:14
1222 00-89 303:25
1322 00-91 303:41
1424 00-92 303:59
1524 00-90 304:15
1624 18-88 424:29
1725 36-88 244:40
1826 00-90 304:57
1926 00-92 305:12
2026 00-94 305:28
2128 00-93 305:46
2228 00-91 306:01
2328 00-89 306:17
2428 00-87 306:32
2526 39-87 346:43
2627 13-86 226:54
2728 30-84 307:11
2827 13-85 027:22
2926 39-83 507:33

Mission Summary :

a) Synoptic Situation
Hurricane Gustav was just emerging from the western side of Cuba into the Gulf of Mexico at the time of take off. The storm was positioned along the western periphery of a deep layer ridge to the northeast and was tracking at 320 deg at 13 kt. Upper-level outflow was quite well developed around the northern semi-circle of the storm, but GOES water vapor imagery indicated that although this was a major hurricane, most of its southern semicircle was being impacted by upper level inflow.

b) Mission Specifics
Takeoff was at 0621UTC from MacDill (delayed due to data comm issues with some of the scientific computers on the aircraft). Since the G-IV got off to a late start, there was concern that some of the data toward the end of the mission would miss the cutoff time for being assimilated into the 12 UTC GFS. Since this equates to ~10:30 AM EDT, it was decided that drop #2 and 3 would be skipped and the mission would proceed directly to drop/turn #4 after drop/turn #1.

GPS dropsonde data from 200 hPa confirmed that although the outflow was quite impressive around the northern semicircle (40-60 kt), there was 25-35 kt upper-level inflow impinging on the storm to the south. Moderate turbulence was encountered from drop point # 23 to 29 in association with Dolly's strong upper-level outflow on the north side of the storm. Problems :

There appeared to be an abnormal number of dropsonde failures during this mission: 4 dropsondes had no launch detect, 1 dropsonde had a very late launch detect, and 1 dropsonde had no winds. Additionally, the AVAPS system went down for a brief period at drop point #24 (28.0⪚N 87.5°W) and that dropsonde was lost. Of the 33 dropsondes launched during the mission, 26 were successfully transmitted off the plane. AOC later reported to HRD that there was a concern that newly acquired dropsondes with the 2nd generation GPS module may be defective and may explain why there where so many failed UBLOX dropsondes during this G-IV mission.


Mission Data :

Dropsonde plots
100 mb
200 mb
250 mb
300 mb
400 mb
500 mb
700 mb
850 mb
925 mb
1000 mb


Page last updated Sept. 17, 2008
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