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06 June 2010

Goals

  • Intercept North of Fort Morgan
  • Possible later intercepts

Flight Review

Deployed on fairly weak, high-based supercell just southeast of Grover, CO. Second attempted flight was cancelled after storm miss.

Tempest1.5 Flight 1

    Coordinated with armada? No
    Ground station location: 40.713520;-104.093552
    Launch/landing: 22:09/22:29
    Flight Time: 19:35
    CoA Area: 2009-WSA-13
    Flight description: Northwest-southeast along CR-390

    2009-WSA-18

    !DEN 06/200 ZDV AIRSPACE UNMANNED ACFT 8 NMR CYS105031 1000/BLW AGL WEF 1006062200-1006070300

    2009-WSA-13

    !DEN 06/199 ZDV AIRSPACE UNMANNED ACFT 8 NMR GLL038023 1000/BLW AGL WEF 1006062200-1006070300

    Engineering Notes

    Summary

    Short flight to sample boundary, flew out at approximately 280 AGL and back at 150 AGL. Simulated USB GPS didn't work and neither did SASSI. It was possibly because of the restart of the Tempest inside of the van or the long run time of the GUI before deployment. There was a 22% packet loss over the WiFi link from the UA to the tracker. However the length of the timeouts never exceeded 12s, which is quite an improvement over the last few flights. The setup hasn't been changed at all. Also, the UA maintained what seemed to be it's usually distance from the tracker vehicle. One other comm. issue for this flight was that the tracker started over the hill from the base station, which meant that WiFi comm's with the tracker were not established until after take-off.

    Data

    Meteorology Notes

    Summary

    Armada was coming in from the east after the previous day's eastern deployment. The plan was to deploy on the early western storms in northeast CO and work our way east towards the armada. A cluster of storms formed northwest of Grover, CO near the CO-WY border around 21:00Z. Storms rapidly intensified as they traveled southeast generally along CR-390 in Weld County. We set up the ground station just west of CR-390 and launched shortly after CoA WSA-13 went active at 22:00Z. Storm possessed a weak meso during the flight. Preliminary evidence suggests that the UA crossed the RFGF on its northwestern leg. We attempted a redeployment further southeast on the same storm but during the time waiting for new CoAs to become active, the storm underwent a merger with a left-moving supercell to its south and the merged complex rapidly dissipated.

    Data

Tempest2 Flight 1

    Flight Time: NA
    CoA Area: 2009-WSA-30

    2009-WSA-30

    !DEN 06/202 ZDV AIRSPACE UNMANNED ACFT 10 NMR AKO046035 1000/BLW AGL WEF 1006070045-1006070300

    2009-WSA-31

    !DEN 06/201 ZDV AIRSPACE UNMANNED ACFT 15 NMR AKO061025 1000/BLW AGL WEF 1006070045-1006070300

    Engineering Notes

    Summary

    Late arrival after storm track missed, following storms were too far off and rain-wrapped, no flight.

    Data