Mission Plan :

The G-IV jet, with HRD scientists John Kaplan, will fly a Synoptic Surveillance missions around Hurricane Ike. The jet will leave MacDill AFB, FL at 05:30 UTC and will recover at MacDill AFB, FL by 13:30 UTC.

Mission Summary :

The mission flight plan was altered slightly due to the close proximity of drops near the beginning of the mission. Consequently, sondes were dropped at only 35 of the original 37 proposed locations (see below). However, only 34 sondes were transitted since one of the sondes was a fast fall that was not backed up and difficulties were encountered with the ASPEN software that precluded coding up and sending the thermodynamic data from this sonde.

Since the storm was very large, the flight was rather turbulent by G-IV standards especially on the east side. Also, surface winds of about 62 knots were measured on one of the drops made early in the flight.

Problems :

The sondes worked fairly well; however, there were a total of 3 sondes that were not processed due to a variety of problems. Of those, two had no launch detect and one was a fast fall. Another fast fall sonde was worked up but not send due to problems encountered when trying to code up and send only the thermodynamic data using the ASPEN software. Thus, a total of 38 sondes were dropped but 34 transmitted. Also, 2 sondes had to be re-transmitted since CARCAH did not receive them even though confirmation of a successful transmission was received from the ASPEN software when they were originally sent.

John Kaplan
Dec. 12, 2008