May 5 - planning for May 6

May 5 - planning for May 6

We are planning for an ER-2 land surface emissivity flight Friday May 6, takeoff 1800 UTC.  The main concern is potential for crosswinds at Offutt.  The flight pattern starts with a NW-SE leg over the Central Facility, then turns SW to cross the Little Washita watershed, then up to Ft. Cobb (where some of the former Little Washita instrumentation now resides), then back across the Central Facility and return to base.

We are targeting Saturday afternoon May 7 for a ER-2 calibration flight over the NW Gulf of Mexico (offshore the TX-LA border).  That will depend on getting positive reports from the instrument teams immediately after the Friday flight.  

There is also small potential for a precip mission Sunday morning.  If the forecasts become more confident for that, we *may* try that instead of Saturday afternoon for the ER-2, with the option of then sending the ER-2 on the Gulf calibration mission instead of the precip does not materialize.  More on that Friday, the forecast currently has low confidence.  Citation should be prepared for a potential Sunday morning mission.