![\"The](\"http:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/47\/2015\/08\/P1020100.jpg\")
<\/a>The DataHawk flying past the USAF radars, with wings as level as possible.<\/p><\/div>\n
Unfortunately, the weather had different ideas. \u00a0This morning started as windy and rainy — Will and I had the first shift and, together with Al, set out and got two hand-flown profiles in. \u00a0I have to say that both Will and Nathan have done an incredible job hand-flying these profiles. \u00a0It is not easy to reliably fly an airplane with a 1 m wingspan several hundred meters above your head, but both have done so with great skill and confidence. \u00a0After flying two profiles to the cloud base around 400 m, it was our turn to come in and get some rest while Nathan and Dale took over profiling duty. \u00a0However, conditions rapidly deteriorated during their shift, with cloud-level coming down to around 100 m, right near the top of the radar “danger-zone” — insert Top Gun references at will — making it very challenging to even get a plane launched without it either being interfered with by the radar, or reaching into the lowest cloud layers. \u00a0Therefore, flights were scrapped for the rest of the morning. \u00a0Will and I headed back out after lunch to see if things had changed, but they had not. \u00a0We spent the rest of the afternoon getting work done in the USAF facility, including plane preparation and calibration of some of our sensors. \u00a0With the limited equipment we had, this calibration exercise very much felt like a high school science experiment.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Nathan in the USAF science lab — here we’re attempting to calibrate the Infrared temperature sensors we have on board the airplane using a bowl of water whose temperature we can vary.<\/p><\/div>\n
This evening, we were on the fence about whether to go back out —\u00a0the clouds were still hanging out at 100 meters, it was still raining, and the temperature had dropped. \u00a0On the bright side, the winds died down a bit, which was just enough for me to say “let’s give it a go”. \u00a0So, Will and I headed out with the initial intention of running some tests to see if our new system setup was working correctly. \u00a0Dale decided to join, and we successfully tested the system. \u00a0By this time (right around 745 pm), the clouds had lifted somewhat, and we decided to let the autopilot do its thing! \u00a0The result was two great flights, with most of the time spent between 150-300 m, where the clouds were hanging out. \u00a0During the second flight, some lower cloud layers (back down to 100 m) started moving in, so after landing we decided not to launch a 9pm flight. \u00a0Tomorrow the weather is supposed to clear up, and we’re looking to take full advantage!<\/p>\n
<\/a>The first autopilot flight flown this evening. As great of a job as Nathan and Will have been doing on the controller, the autopilot is still substantially smoother, improving profile quality.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/a>A composite figure of all of the profiles flown since August 4. The colors represent temperature, the horizontal axis represent the dates, and the vertical axis the height (in meters) above the surface.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When we set out for Oliktok, things seemed somewhat straightforward — the airplanes had just come off of consecutive campaigns to Utah and Japan where the team did not have to use the remote control transmitter once. \u00a0It was basically a “launch and monitor” situation where the aircraft’s autopilot did all of the flying, including… 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-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-02 00:25:03","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\/76","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=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ciresblogs.colorado.edu\/erasmus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}