{"id":63,"date":"2015-08-09T06:01:07","date_gmt":"2015-08-09T06:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/?p=63"},"modified":"2015-08-09T06:01:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-09T06:01:07","slug":"reflections-at-the-halfway-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/2015\/08\/09\/reflections-at-the-halfway-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections at the halfway point"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, just like that, this two-week campaign is half over. \u00a0It has gone quickly, but not at all as I had envisioned it going in. \u00a0The issues that we’ve been having with radar interference have really made for some long days. \u00a0Coming in, the plan was for our four team members to split up into two teams of two, and work shifts of four hours at a time. \u00a0That way, everyone would get at least some rest during the day to keep up with laundry, exercise, sleeping, or whatever. \u00a0But because of the issues we’ve been having, all four of us have basically been going for 14 hours per day, and I can tell that it’s starting to take its toll. \u00a0As deflating as the interference issues can be, I think that the fact that some of the air has been let out of the balloon is just simply people needing some more rest.<\/p>\n

This morning, we got up and got ready to go. \u00a0But as we were sitting down for breakfast, it started raining hard enough that flights were not an option. \u00a0We went out to the AMF to work on aircraft and computer code. \u00a0It wasn’t long until our friend the grizzly bear came back to visit. \u00a0Because he was quickly bearing down on the AMF3, we were asked to quickly pack our things and head back to the USAF facility. \u00a0Apparently, the bear had similar ideas, as he spent about 25 minutes hunting geese in a pond about 10 yards from the radar station. \u00a0While it was cool to see the bear up close, at this point it would have been better to keep flying!<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The grizzly bear that visited us at the AMF and USAF facility today.<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The bear peeking over the edge of the Oliktok Point runway, while hunting down foxes.<\/p><\/div>\n

After lunch, we were able to get back out and continue our operations. \u00a0During this time, we were able to fly three profiles, and one low level flight. \u00a0The exciting part here is that one of the profiles and the low-level flight were flown almost entirely by autopilot. \u00a0During the profile flight, the clouds\u00a0dropped quickly and at the top of the 500 m profile we found ourselves in cloud. \u00a0Unfortunately, the water droplets clogged our pitot tube, a small device that can tell us how fast the airplane is moving relative to the air, which made the autopilot think that the airplane had lost all of its airspeed. \u00a0So it went full throttle and rapidly descended, at which point Nathan took over and brought it in for a safe landing. \u00a0During the low-altitude flight, the radar got us while flying at 20 m, resulting in an inadvertent landing. \u00a0In both instances, the autopilot reacted exactly as it should have to the information it was given, but unfortunately outside influences (cloud\/rain droplets and electromagnetic interference) led to that information being incorrect!<\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>

Our first successful autopilot profile — can you tell which parts of the flight were flown by the autopilot and which by the human pilot?<\/p><\/div>\n

After dinner, we headed back out to take advantage of the good weather conditions. \u00a0We completed some additional flights, including a substantial amount of additional autopilot control. \u00a0While we can not avoid the radar interference completely, we’ve found that our best bet to do so is either really close to the surface, or above the radar’s scanning pattern. \u00a0Therefore, we’ll continue to look to do flights at 5-10 m above the surface, or above 200 m, where the radar does not seem to scan. \u00a0Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get some parts in from Deadhorse that were shipped up from Colorado when we first figured out that the radar was causing our issues — assuming that the person going to get them can get around the many oil rigs currently moving on the road between here and Deadhorse! \u00a0These parts should help us to more confidently go after additional profiles from 200 m up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, just like that, this two-week campaign is half over. \u00a0It has gone quickly, but not at all as I had envisioned it going in. \u00a0The issues that we’ve been having with radar interference have really made for some long days. \u00a0Coming in, the plan was for our four team members to split up into… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 01:56:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}