After 28 days in Salt Lake City plus two weeks of integration, we’ve made it to the end of the UWFPS Campaign!   We are happy to report that the weather cooperated enough for us to complete all of our flight hours, EXACTLY! The last flights were mainly at night and in non-inversion conditions. Even… Read More

When we arrived in Salt Lake City three weeks ago, the region was in the middle of an inversion event. This was great for the start of our research project because we were able to immediately start using our 80 allotted flight hours. To keep track of our hours and how the project is progressing,… Read More

As luck would have it, we arrived during an inversion event.   Cold-pool (e.g. inversion) conditions began in the Utah, Salt Lake, and Cache Valley’s on Saturday (1/14). Without the guarantee of another inversion event occurring before we leave, we wanted to start flying right away. Fortunately, both the Twin Otter and the rental truck… Read More

For those readers who might be interested, this post provides a few more technical details about our flight plans….   For this study, we planned three different flight patterns that cover the Utah, Salt Lake, and Cache Valleys (described further below).  Besides collecting data that is distributed across the region, these flights also include elements that… Read More

Now that the plane has arrived in Colorado, it’s time to start filling it up! For aircraft-based field projects, there are typically a few weeks prior to the start of research flights where scientists and aircraft technicians install the scientific instruments on board. This is called the integration period (or, otter-gration in this case), and… Read More