Mission Summary
20080911H1 Aircraft 42RF
Ike Ocean Winds flight 2008

Scientific Crew (42RF)
Lead ScientistFrank Marks
Dropsonde ScientistBob Black
Radar ScientistSundaraman Gopalakrishnan
NESDIS ScientistPaul Chang
NESDIS ScientistZorana Jelenak
NESDIS ScientistStofelen
NESDIS ScientistChu

Flight Crew (42RF)
Pilots
Al Girimonte
Flight DirectorBarry Damiano
Navigator
Flt. Eng.Greg Bast
Data TechBobby Peek
Elec. TechBill Olney
Steve Wade

Mission Plan :

N42RF flew an EMC-tasked Tail Doppler Radar (TDR) mission into Hurricane Ike in the Gulf of Mexico, dropping AXBTs in the vicinity of the Ike and Gustav drifting buoy 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 0600 UTC. Plan is to send superobs back to AOML ftp site.

Mission Summary :

Take off Landing
MacDill AFB, FL19:54 UTC MacDill AFB, FL05:46 UTC

Good mission. Storm not as strong as previous mission and appears to be leveling off likely because the inner eyewall disappeared since the last mission. Very interesting storm structure with immense rain area on E side roughly 100 km wide (see Fig. 1), but practically no precipitation on the W side. Very interesting SFMR data showing multiple (3) wind maxima over the eastern semicircle of the storm (see Fig. 2). Western semicircle had much less reflectivity and very few rainbands.

TDR mission went moderately well with analyses and superobs completed only for the first leg from E to W. See flight track in Fig. 3. We were having a number of issues with the tail radar (turned out to be water getting into the radome), which resulted in the tail radar failing in the middle of the 2nd leg from S to N through the center. Completed AXBT and dropsonde combo drops along track on 1st E-W leg through center and near drifting buoy positions from the AFRC C-130 drops 10 h previous. Excellent upper ocean coverage in cold eddy near Gustav track (SST ~25°C).

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). Unfortunately, given that only one leg of data was available no real-time runs were made using the superobs from this flight.

Dropsondes 16/16
AXBTs 10/10
Penetrations 9

Lead Scientist's Log

Problems :

No LF radar again during this mission. Tail radar failed during second leg through the storm due to water getting into the radome. No radar data available for 2nd half of mission. It is unlikely that AOC will be able to repair the radar before next flight. Need more automation of the processing to streamline the analysis and superob generation.

Frank Marks


Mission Data :

Dropsonde plots
850 mb
925 mb
1000 mb
surface
NetCDF listing

Ten second listing

Flight Data Plots


Flight track

Temperature and Moisture

Wind and Atlitude

Flight track detail


Page last updated April 22, 2009
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