Aerosonde Flight Summary for 07/13/2005
Sortie Number: 050713-05
Take off: 1300
Landing: 2029
Flight Description:
Very Light winds noted offshore. Stronger winds noted as the aircraft neared the cost. Engine problem limited the maximum height of porpoise-ing. Maximum height during porpoise-ing was 1640 ft for virtually all except the first 30-40 km when 3900 ft was reached; thereafter the engine problem limited the max altitude. Launch of AC126 occurred at 13:00UTC. Control was passed to the local command center and the aircraft began its flight around the triangle. Soundings along track were only flown to an altitude of 1500ft because the engine was reading excessively high cylinder head temperatures during climbs. Initially a small convective cell was encountered at the beginning of the flight but dissipated and quickly moved to the west of the flight track The remainder of the flight was uneventful, as the flight region was again under partly cloudy skies, providing anther good set of data for comparison to the previous two flights. Upon completion of the flight pattern, the local ground command center took back control and landed the aircraft at 21:29UTC for a flight time of 7hr 29min.
Flight Objectives:
Continuous montoring over the Pacific Ocean regime to map horizontal and vertical gradients of PTU and Winds.
Instrument Performance:
Nominal
Flight Track:
