Day 15: Earthquake

This morning there was a mag 5.4 earthquake in SoCal. When it hit we evacuated the building for some time. No one was injured and there were no damages.

Day 13: Sunday!

The upload to the DC-8 is going well and we've been off all weekend. There are still a few components to bolt into place and some cables to be run, but in all we're in good shape. Here are a few photos from last week Thursday and Friday.

Miao is lifting a calibration target full of liquid nitrogen up to the C-band staring radiometer.


Ankita is wiring the dropsone rack and doing some final testing.


I am programming the acquisition software on the main rack (this is where I will be sitting most of the time).


Here's a view from inside the aircraft:

Day 9: Instrument Installation

Boy, have we been busy. These last days we have been calibrating our instruments and installing them on the aircraft. Below, Al is putting the last fasteners into the PSR/A (a scanning polarimetric radiometer, more info on our group website: http://cet.colorado.edu).



Next week Monday, the plane will be checked for weight balance and Wednesday the NASA crew will fly a "shakedown" flight (where a minimal crew takes the plane up to see if anything falls out, vibrates apart, or exhibits other undesirable behaviors). Next week Thursday will be our first science test flight out over Catalina Island.

These seats are ready for installation:



Before the end of the week, I'll take a short video tour inside the aircraft and showcase our suite of instruments.

Day 6: Off

Saturday we worked a full day and today, Sunday, we have off. I slept in late (08.00) and spent some time at the hotel pool. This evening I'll take over some laundry. No interesting stories or news. Al is flying back tonight with the 55 GHz unit and a number of other supplies and we'll get back to work at 06.15 tomorrow.

Day 4: Instrument Assembly and Test

Everyone was very busy today.

We have all of the instruments we brought with us assembled and have begun testing. A few instruments need to be calibrated using liquid nitrogen tomorrow (Saturday) starting at 06:45. On four particular identical instruments there was an issue with material being too thick to get a milspec connector to lock down all the way, so the plates to which they are mounted will need to be modified next week.

This afternoon Dave, Adam, and Al inspected the 21/31 GHz Hughes radiometer (photo below, L to R). They were discussing calibration techniques and decided we will install this particular unit on the plane and calibrate it in place since some of the lens mounting needs to be done by spot-drilling holes.



Miao is carefully installing a few thermistors on the L-Band feedhorn here. It also appears that he is reading the newspaper at the same time. Don't be fooled, thermistor installation while catching up with the sports section is no simple matter of walking and chewing gum.


We've also been having some very hot weather outside. Today was the coolest, topping off at 101 F. In those kind of temperatures I hear you need to be cautious of heat exhaustion, so I didn't forget to take a little down time for number one.


In other news, Al is flying back tomorrow night to get the instrument we decided to add at the last minute. It's a 55 GHz unit that we'll use for temperature sounding in conjunction with data from the dropsondes (more on that tomorrow). It's pretty late to be adding another instrument to the manifest but it will significantly contribute to the scientific goals of the mission.

Interesting Hangar Story

I just heard an interesting story from Ron Wilcox (NASA) about the hangar. Turns out that in this very hangar (that you see in yesterday's photo) both Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3 as well as the movie Terminal were shot in nearly their entirety. For the Pirates movie apparently they created a river/lake inside the hangar. I suppose there just isn't such a gigantic indoor area anywhere LA. When NASA moved from Edwards AFB to this location they took out a 20 year lease (this happened last year), so movies that want to film here will have to use the hangar next door, which is slightly smaller but could still hold a handful of 747s. There was a movie being filmed here yesterday. We saw about 12 big-rigs and/or trailers, 50 cars, and half a dozen police vehicles in the parking lot. I figured I would go over today and see them, but they packed up the entire operation last night. Strange part is, I never saw more than a dozen people the entire time. Side note, this hangar was where the B1 bomber development took place decades ago.

Day 3: Unpacking

Sorry nothing from Day 2. We were all exhausted and spent most of the day in bed/poolside. Last night Dave arrived with the truck and Al arrived by plane. We left the hotel at 06:30 for the hangar and unloaded our cargo. We have staged all the equipment in the lab area and everything seems to still be functional. Tomorrow we start uploading equipment to the plane and calibrating a few instruments outdoors. It looks like we'll be working Saturday, and we are also considering adding another instrument, which means Al would have to fly back and get it from the lab this weekend. We returned to the hotel from the hangar at 19:00 and we'll be meeting for sushi soon. I'm not much of a sushi connoisseur, so I hope Miao and Al have good suggestions.

Here is the hangar; the DC-8 (our plane) is the one in front. Behind it is a 747 named Sophia (not part of this project, but sharing the hangar). Sorry for the blurry photos, we are not allowed to use flashes because they will set off the infrared fire alarms.



Here's one photo from yesterday of Miao, myself, and Ankita (L to R) inside the cargo bay of the DC-8. I'll post more photos tomorrow. I haven't downloaded today's pictures yet.

Day 1: SFO Airport

We are off to an interesting start.

A little background of the events leading up to today--

Myself and my colleague Ambarish returned from our technical conference in Boston on Saturday. Our lab director Prof. Al Gasiewski returned from the same conference Sunday afternoon in time for our final scheduled lab test of equipment. We met a few others in our lab Sunday night (David Kraft, our expert mechanical engineer, and graduate students Miao Tian and Ankita Chaturvedi), for equipment testing, which was successful but lasted long into the evening ~10.30.

Monday was dedicated to packing what turned out to be more than 3,800 lbs of equipment for AMISA, the Arctic Mechanisms of Interaction between the Surface and Atmosphere campaign. Packing all that equipment took from 8 AM Monday until 1:30 AM Tuesday (yes, AM in both cases), but Al bought us all dinner which made the evening hours somewhat shorter.

A small amount of the equipment packed up and ready to leave:


Tuesday, today, the equipment is on its way by truck and I am traveling from Denver to Palmdale where we will upload the equipment to the NASA DC-8 aircraft for the mission. I am traveling with Miao and Ankita and we are presently delayed one hour in the San Fransisco airport. On the first leg of the flight (DEN to SFO) I met Julie; who, on hearing of the accommodations we expect in Sweden, insisted I bring a large jar of peanut butter to avoid certain starvation. More on "Camp Ripan" to come!

Graduate Students Miao Tian, and Ankita Chaturvedi: