[Oracles-flight-planning] Planning for routine flights

Steven Howell showell at soest.hawaii.edu
Fri May 13 14:05:12 PDT 2016 

Hi,

As Lenny noted, the flight tracks are I plotted are just 4 points. I'm not sure what format you find easiest to handle, but I expect it doesn't matter much with so little data. I've attached two versions of a file with a matrix of latitudes (one line for each survey latitude) and two matrices of longitude (one for 8 hour flights, the other for 9). I expect it makes most sense to only plot 2 or 3 of them.

Longer flights give a much better transit to on station ratio. Given the payload weight problems we've been hearing about, is a 9 hour flight even possible? 

I'm not sure whether following the bend in the 600 mB flow is best for the routine flights, but it seems extremely useful for other flights. If we have smoke descending into clouds as the mid-level air flows toward Walvis Bay we get two wonderful things: a chance to study the phenomenon without needling long transits and a chance to compare the effects in two areas with quite different cloud properties: low and thin near Namibia, thicker, higher, and wetter out towards St Helena.

Steve


On May 13, 2016, at 8:46 AM, Jens Redemann <Jens.Redemann-1 at nasa.gov> wrote:

> See response below. Thanks, Lenny.
> 
> Jens
> 
> On 5/12/2016 6:58 PM, Leonhard Pfister wrote:
>> (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.
>> 
> That's great. Thanks for asking Pat.
> 
>> (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)?
>> 
> That's an interesting idea. I have no preference. The basic idea was to give the climate modelers something repetitive for model testing. I am not sure if a constant-latitude leg is essential for that. Maybe Rob and Paquita can chime in here?!
> 
> Jens
> 
>> 
>> 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
>>>> > 
>>>> > _______________________________________________
>>>> > oracles-flight-planning mailing list
>>>> > 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/
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> oracles-flight-planning mailing list
>>>> oracles-flight-planning at espo.nasa.gov
>>>> https://espo.nasa.gov/lists/listinfo/oracles-flight-planning
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Dr. Jens Redemann 
>>> Physical Research Scientist, Principal Investigator ORACLES
>>> 
>>> NASA Ames Research Center
>>> Jens Redemann/Mail Stop 245-5
>>> Bldg. 245, Rm. 106
>>> P.O. Box 1
>>> Moffett Field, CA 94035-0001
>>> USA
>>> 
>>> 
>>> cell#1: (805) 218-8729  cell#2: (650) 318-8407 work: (650) 604-6259
>>> email: Jens.Redemann-1 at nasa.gov 
>>> web: https://espo.nasa.gov/person/Jens_Redemann
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> oracles-flight-planning mailing list
>>> oracles-flight-planning at espo.nasa.gov
>>> https://espo.nasa.gov/lists/listinfo/oracles-flight-planning
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> oracles-flight-planning mailing list
>> oracles-flight-planning at espo.nasa.gov
>> https://espo.nasa.gov/lists/listinfo/oracles-flight-planning
> 
> -- 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. Jens Redemann 
> Physical Research Scientist, Principal Investigator ORACLES
> 
> NASA Ames Research Center
> Jens Redemann/Mail Stop 245-5
> Bldg. 245, Rm. 106
> P.O. Box 1
> Moffett Field, CA 94035-0001
> USA
> 
> 
> cell#1: (805) 218-8729  cell#2: (650) 318-8407 work: (650) 604-6259
> email: Jens.Redemann-1 at nasa.gov 
> web: https://espo.nasa.gov/person/Jens_Redemann
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> oracles-flight-planning mailing list
> 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 comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part; and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop, And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you’re free the machine will be prevented from working at all.” (Mario Savio)
from http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://espo.nasa.gov/pipermail/oracles-flight-planning/attachments/20160513/22d255aa/attachment-0009.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: sflatitudes_8_9hr.xlsx
Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet
Size: 42740 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://espo.nasa.gov/pipermail/oracles-flight-planning/attachments/20160513/22d255aa/attachment-0003.xlsx>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://espo.nasa.gov/pipermail/oracles-flight-planning/attachments/20160513/22d255aa/attachment-0010.html>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: sflatitudes_8_9hr.txt
URL: <http://espo.nasa.gov/pipermail/oracles-flight-planning/attachments/20160513/22d255aa/attachment-0003.txt>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://espo.nasa.gov/pipermail/oracles-flight-planning/attachments/20160513/22d255aa/attachment-0011.html>

More information about the oracles-flight-planning mailing list