Mission Summary
20080909H1 Aircraft 42RF
Ike Ocean Winds flight 2008

Scientific Crew (42RF)
Lead ScientistPaul Chang (NESDIS)
Lead ScientistFrank Marks
NESDIS ScientistBob Black

Flight Crew (42RF)
PilotsBarry Choy
Al Girimonte
Flight DirectorBarry Damiano
NavigatorJoe Bishop
Flt. Eng.Greg Bast
Data TechBobby Peek
Elec. TechBill Olney
Steve Wade

Mission Plan :

N42RF will fly an EMC-tasked Tail Doppler Radar (TDR) mission into Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico, dropping AXBTs in the vicinity of the pre-storm Ike and post-storm Gustav AXBT locations. After the TDR legs are completed we will do penetrations for NESDIS Ocean-winds. TO from MacDill AFB, FL at 2000 UTC, and recover at MacDill AFB, FL by 0400 UTC. Plan is to send superobs back to AOML ftp site for use by Fuqing Zhang and the HFIP-TACC real-time test to initialize the ARW model starting at 0000 UTC 10 September.

Mission Summary :

Take off Landing
MacDill AFB, FL20:10 UTC MacDill AFB, FL04:30 UTC


Flight Track

TDR mission went really well with analyses and superobs completed for the first three legs: (1) 1st leg from NW-SE crossing the western tip of Cuba; (2) 2nd leg from NE to SW along NW coast of Cuba; and (3) 3rd leg from SW to NE (reverse of 2nd leg). See flight track in Figure. Completed AXBT drops along track on 1st leg. Other AXBT drops combo with dropsondes at end points of legs (NW, NE, and SW) and in eyewall. Good shallow water AXBT data S of western Cuba and N of Isle of Pines.

Superobs were generated on the Mac laptop connecting via ftp to the HP Workstation. While the process worked reasonably smoothly, it was a relatively intense process because of lack of experience and automation of the processes. Thanks to X-Chat and John Gamache we were able to get the superobs completed and off the plane to the ftp site (see X-Chat summary). Fuqing was able to access the superobs and use them in time to do a real-time run on the TACC.

Dropsondes 19 regular
plus 3 experimental prototypes
AXBT 6
Penetrations 7
Radar tapes 3

Problems :

LF radar did not work during this mission. Some difficulty with dropsonde transmission (only 4 sondes went out) via ASDL due to HRD operator error. Some issues ftping superobs from Mac. Need more automation of the processing to streamline the analysis and superob generation.

Frank Marks

Mission Data

Dropsonde plots
700 mb
850 mb
925 mb
1000 mb
surface

NetCDF listing

Ten second listing

Flight Data


Flight track
Temperature and Moisture
Wind and Atlitude

Page last updated April 20, 2009
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