Mission Summary
20080828I1 Aircraft 43RF
Pre-storm Ocean suvey (AXBT) flight 2008

Scientific Crew (43RF)
Lead Project ScientistEric Uhlhorn
AXBT ScientistNick Shay (UMiami)
AXBT ScientistBen Jaimes de la Cruz (UMiami)

Flight Crew (43RF)
PilotsM. Nelson
A. Ebhardt
Flight DirectorJ. Parrish
NavigatorT. Gallagher
Flt. Eng.T. Lynch
J. Smith
Data TechS. Nacher
Elec. TechD. San Souci

Mission Plan :

N43RF will fly an EMC-tasked 3D Doppler Winds mission into Tropical Storm Gustav. It will leave MacDill AFB, FL at 08:00 UTC and arrive at MacDill, FL at 16:00 UTC.

Mission Summary : The mission was flown largely according to plan. AXBTs were dropped every 1/2° longitude along each E/W leg of the pattern. A slight modification to the original plan was made to capture the warm eddy centered at around 91°W, 25°N. All AXBTs were channel 12 transmitters. The original plan called for 64 AXBTs to be deployed, however, only 50 were deployed of which 2 failed (reason below).

Problems : At around 21:25 UTC, smoke began to occur in the cockpit. Due to the uncertain source of the fire, the science mission was terminated, and the aircraft data system was shut down for the remainder of the flight. This impacted measurements along the final west-to-east leg at 28°N.

Eric Uhlhorn
9/25/08

Mission Data :

1 second data file | NetCDF data file

Flight Data


Flight track

Temperature and Moisture

Wind and Atlitude


Page last updated Oct. 15, 2008
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