Mission Plan :

N42RF is assigned a mission into AL93 (before genesis into Kyle). The plan is for a WNW to ESE pass through the center and then fly an Ocean Winds pattern. If the Air Force finds a center, we will do a Figure 4 pattern.

Mission Summary :

Because the system was in a pre-genesis stage, there were only a few scatterers during the pass through what was an apparent center. During the first pass, it seemed that a flight-level center had developed over Hispañola. Two radar analyses were sent, but the lack of scatterers meant that they were not particularly meaningful. Two sets of superobs were also sent in real time.

The system turned out to be very disorganized. A few wind shifts were seen at flight level, but no closed circulations. The system will have to wait for a while before developing.

Problems :

There were many problems with computers during the flight. The trackball for the workstation failed during Ike, but was not replaced. Therefore, the workstation would not boot until we borrowed a trackball from AOC. In addition, the network to the laptop was down at the beginning of the flight due to unplugged wires that were hard to find. A port on the AOC data system did not work, so our connection to ASDL was also down at the start of the flight. All these problems were unrelated to each other.

In the midst of the flight, the tail radar went down once again. The ASAU was replaced, and the radar worked for the remainder of the season.

Mission Data :