Aerosonde Flight Summary for 07/11/2005
Sortie Number: 050711-04
Take off: 1340
Landing: 2137
Flight Description:
Flight went well. Flew through MCS in the ITCZ and ahead of tropical wave. Vertical wind shear noted. A combination test flight and science flight was flown on July 11. AC129 was launched at 13:40UTC and directed to the wait box offshore. The next hour was spent putting the aircraft through a series of exercises. Once the ground controller was satisfied with the aircraft performance, control was handed to the local command center on Iridium, and the aircraft was directed to begin the triangle flight pattern. The flight pattern took the aircraft into and around a large mesoscale convective system (MCS). Heavy rain was experienced during parts of the flight. Because of the heavy rain, the right sonde humidity sensor failed at approximately 21:12UTC, resulting in erroneous readings. Once AC129 completed the triangle pattern, it was sent to the wait box, where control was handed back to the local ground command center. The aircraft was safely landed at 21:37UTC, giving a flight length of 7hr 57min. From a science perspective, this was a very exciting flight as it provided data on the boundary layer processes occurring within a tropical convective system. It also provides a good comparison to the flight from July 10, during which the flight region was under mostly clear skies.
Flight Objectives:
Check flight of 129 airframe and a science flight for continuous montoring over the Pacific Ocean regime to map horizontal and vertical gradients of PTU and Winds.
Instrument Performance:
Nominal. Wind finding alogrithm was initially set for 2 km; however, the additional time was slowing the flight pattern it was changed to 5 km after the first leg.
Flight Track:
