APR-2 Status for Sep 22 - Post Flight

This was the transit flight from STX back to FLL with several hours of science investigation of PGI46.  APR-2 collected data on essentially all of the science portion of the flight; no problems were noted apart from a fault of the Ka-band TWTA which caused a loss of several minutes of Ka-band data.

One of the flight objectives was to again collect data in a CloudSat underpass.  APR-2 collected data in stronger precipitation that the underpass from flight 21; it will provide another interesting case for comparison with CloudSat.  The remainder of the flight was focused on PGI46.  Intense convection was noted upon arrival, including some near the time of the CloudSat overpass.  However, as the flight progressed, most of the observed precipitation became stratiform, although occasional small (young?) convective cells were noted. 

The stratiform rain provided a nice relatively uniform target for estimation of cross-track winds from APR-2 (uniform winds across the track are assumed).  We noted a number of cases with possible changes in the wind direction, possibly indicating the start of an area of rotation.