[Oracles-flight-planning] Planning for routine flights

Thu May 12 18:58:00 PDT 2016

(1) I will ask Pat if he can draw these on the imagery.  If he can draw 
the met fields, we can certainly draw flight plans.

These plans are easy enough that no kml file is needed, since three or 
four points define each plan.

(2) I understand the logic of the east-west leg -- the idea being to 
follow the BB plume as it descends into the cloud.

And yes, the climo winds, even down to 850mb show easterlies to 10-15S, 
with bending occurring between those two

latitudes as Steve says.  We are spending a lot of time going northward 
and southward near the coast, though.  Is this

productive?.  Should we consider heading NW and then eastward following 
the curve of the 600mb flow (and then retracing that

backwards)?

L.

On 5/12/16 5:12 PM, Jens Redemann wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> thanks for doing this - I finally had some time to look at this. You 
> have put a lot of thought into this and I am not sure what the best 
> way for a productive discussion is. My gut feeling is that the most 
> productive way (because it receives the most diverse feedback) to move 
> forward is to discuss this during the STM in June, as part of the 
> flight planning activities. I am attaching a preliminary agenda, in 
> which I scheduled this discussion under your leadership for Saturday 
> morning (the whole agenda is still in flux, but the list of topics 
> should be near-final). As you can see, the major push for the June 
> in-person STM will be to discuss flight planning and plans. We could 
> provide a preview in our May telecon next week?!
>
> By way of upfront commentary, I think my strong preference would be 
> for routine flight plans that reach far out into the SE Atlantic. I 
> wonder if we could task somebody to overlay the pattern you drew up 
> onto the satellite imagery or even some Worldview combination of RGB 
> and AOD retrievals. That could be quite useful. If you send out a kmz 
> or digital file with the coordinates, maybe we could ask Lenny to take 
> a crack at this?!
>
> I think your scoring of the flight plan for what you call mechanical 
> characteristics may change a bit as we learn more form the instrument 
> PI's about their instrument preferred mode(s) of operation - this will 
> be part of the homework for next week and the STM - I am hoping to get 
> to that homework assignment tomorrow.
>
> Thanks again for spurring the discussion,
>
> Jens
>
>
> On 5/10/2016 8:51 PM, Steven Howell wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Having sent out a sample routine flight plan last September with no 
>> responses, I figure I'll try again to get the conversation going. 
>> I've attached the plan I sent before, but also want to illustrate the 
>> tradeoffs between latitude and time surveying.
>>
>> I'm assuming a high altitude transit to a target latitude, then a 
>> survey to the west at varying altitudes, more or less like the 
>> attached plan. It takes about 3 hours to get to 15 S and back, and an 
>> additional 12 minutes (round trip) for each additional degree north. 
>> So we lose an hour of survey time by choosing 10 S rather than 15 S. 
>> During the survey, I assume an average flight speed of 136 m/s. That 
>> reflects time spent low and climbing, when the P-3 slows by 15 m/s.
>>
>> My original plan is for 15 S, but the 600 mbar wind / IR movie makes 
>> it seem like 15 is often at the very southern edge of the outflow, 
>> where it is turning south. It seems to me that going farther north 
>> might be worthwhile, but it'll mean long transits. I wanted to 
>> superimpose the plots below on the movie, but didn't come up with an 
>> easy way to do it.
>>
>> The first map below shows the distances surveyed in 8 hour routine 
>> flights. The second is for 9 hour flights. Given the weight problems 
>> we've heard so much about, I don't know whether 9 hour flights are 
>> possible.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 29, 2015, at 3:23 PM, Steven Howell <showell at soest.hawaii.edu> 
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I was going to bring this up during the telecon, but after 2 hours 
>> I decided to simply write it out instead.
>> >
>> > We agreed at the meeting that what we learned during the dry run 
>> should be used to evaluate possible routine flight plans. We might as 
>> well do that while our memories are fresh. In the attached document, 
>> I've listed possible criteria for comparing candidate flight plans 
>> and applied some of them (the easy ones) to the routine flight plan 
>> from the proposal.
>> >
>> > Is this a productive way to start? I'd welcome suggestions for 
>> changing the criteria, for modifications to the flight plan, and for 
>> entirely different flight plans. I need help trying to figure out how 
>> to gauge whether the flight plan was useful on any particular day, 
>> given the meteorology and aerosols estimated as well as practical 
>> from satellite and model measurements.
>> >
>> > I'm willing to make a few more candidate flight plans for us to 
>> evaluate. What I have in mind are:
>> > 1) Essentially the proposal plan but avoiding Angolan airspace and 
>> spending another half hour above the BB plume, sacrificing an in-situ 
>> leg.
>> > 2) Extend to a 10 hour plan.
>> > 3) Move to 12 S.
>> >
>> > Are these worth looking at?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Steve
>> >
>> >
>> > <routine_flight_criteria_SH.docx>
>> > --
>> > Steven Howell, University of Hawaii, Department of Oceanography
>> >
>> > "Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power 
>> is ancient. It's called 'rain'." -- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > oracles-flight-planning at espo.nasa.gov
>> > https://espo.nasa.gov/lists/listinfo/oracles-flight-planning
>>
>> -- 
>> Steven Howell, University of Hawaii, Department of Oceanography
>>
>> “There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more 
>> blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the 
>> abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, 
>> and that we are ourselves incredibly and sometimes almost 
>> incredulously real.” (G. K. Chesterton)
>> from http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/
>>
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>
> -- 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Jens Redemann
> Physical Research Scientist, Principal Investigator ORACLES
>
> NASA Ames Research Center
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>
>
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