Friday, August 19, 2005

	Today was a scheduled Ocean Winds test flight involving N42RF and the NRL P-
3.  There were still some issues with the instrument integration on N42RF, however, so 
the test flight was scrubbed today.  While the aircraft was in the hangar, however, we 
were able to access the RAMSDIS satellite server from the HRD workstation on the P-3 
and download satellite imagery from HRD.  This will provide a new capability to access 
satellite imagery in near real-time during P-3 missions.
	The P-3Õs are down for the weekend.  N42RF will continue to undergo tests on 
Monday, with a scheduled test flight on Tuesday.  The plan right now calls for N43RF to 
fly a short (1-2 hr) test flight on Monday (14 UTC takeoff) in conjunction with the NRL 
P-3 to test communications from the NOAA P-3 to the RAINEX ground operations 
center and then back up to the NRL P-3.  This flight will also test the distance necessary 
so that the satellite communications for the NRL P-3 are not interfered with from the 
NOAA P-3.  This flight will also give us the opportunity to fix the data acquisition 
software for the microphysics probes on N43RF.  The flight on Tuesday will test the 
communication of Doppler radar analysis products that was previously successfully 
tested on N43RF on last WednesdayÕs flight.
	The remnants of T.D. #10 have dissipated.  There is, however, some indication of 
a possible midlevel circulation in debris clouds north of Puerto Rico (Fig. 10), but there is 
no indication of development over the coming days.  There is no other indication of 
development of any system in the western Atlantic, Caribbean, or Gulf of Mexico for the 
next several days.  Farther east, there is an area of convection associated with a tropical 
wave that has moved off of Africa.  Some members of the GFS ensemble suggest 
development in the next 2-5 days as this wave traverses the Atlantic (Fig. 11).  Any 
operations into such a system would likely be a week away at best.