24-25may         Ankur

After a successful CI missions mapping the dryline on 24 May (and an
aborted one on 23 May - the day I arrived), we flew an ABL mission on the
western side of our domain on 25 May over the Homestead site (OK
panhandle) with the King Air and the DLR Falcon DIAL Lidar, including a
drop sonde in Colorado.  A report is available in the JOSS catalog at:

http://www.joss.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/catalog/ihop/report/index  

Click on Mission Scientist Summary for 25 May.


For 26 May, I successfully proposed a mission on the eastern King Air leg
near Wichita, KS.  Tthe DLR Falcon will fly east-west over the King Ai
(running a diagonal pattern over ISS flux sites 7,8,9).  The Falcon will
also do some north-south legs at higher altitude over the ARM-CART domain
(since the military area is open for the long weekend).  The Doppler lidar
system (HRDL) on the Falcon *may* be up for test mode tomorrow after being
down for repairs since the beginning, so that will be exciting.  The King
Air will hopefully be flying a "stacks" mission to measure fluxes
throughout the boundary layer (and flux divergence) (i.e. legs at .8, .4,
.2 zi and 200 ft), however Bob Grossman (King Air PI) really wants to fly
another low-level flux mapping missions, so we'll have to see.

I've worked for 16 hours today and we have our next meeting in 9 hours.
I'm beat!  Planning a mission here at the ops center is pretty fun,
occasionally confusing (the motto is Hurry Up and Wait!).  The ops center
staff is exceptionally helpful in seeing your plan come to fruition.  
I've also liked doing the briefings at the airport with the pilots and
airplane project managers, seeing the first cut data at the debriefings
and hanging around the airplanes. Peggy Lamone (King Air PI) arrived today
and she'll be a big help for future ABL planning (instead of just me
proposing things by myself in front of dozens of random people). She'll be
on the King Air tomorrow for the 26 May mission.  I also met Syed Ismail
today (LASE scientist).  Ops director Dick Dirks left today, and Bob
Grossman leaves Monday. I've met more people in three days than I have all
last year!

I'm not sure if I'll get to fly on any mission.  The Falcon is crowded
with instruments, the King Air wants people who will stick around longer
to train on the co-pilot seat procedures, and I don't have P-3 clearance.
I might sneak my way onto LASE at sometime.  

The weather is pretty iffy the next few days.  The CI people don't see
much going for them, except possibly on Tuesday. There might be a evening
or morning low-level jet mission Monday or Tuesday. The forecasts are
quite muddled.  We'll have to see whether there is anything good for ABL
work.  Still waiting for those golden days to get the LASE, P-3 and
Proteus (which arrives this Monday) for an ABL mission along with King Air
and Falcon.