Feb 24: The
P3-B flew from Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) to Dryden to team
up with the DC-8 and from there to start the transit flights to
Hong Kong. The P3-B
was two days late leaving WFF due to a fuel leaks. The
P-3B was diverted from Edwards AFB (Dryden) to Palmdale, due to
runway repairs. Palmdale
is an air force “skunk works” facility that as it turns out is
closer to the hotel in Lancaster. The C130 transited to Dryden
the day before on Feb 23rd , loaded DC-8
spare parts and other gear and proceeded the next morning to Palmdale
before the runway closed.
Flight 4 Summary - WFF to Palmdale
transit (note: Flights 1,2,and3 were test flights conducted at
WFF during integration):
While there were no focused objectives for this
transit, several notable observations were made:
Extremely low NOy values (tens of pptv) were
encountered early in the flight
The middle of the flight was dominated by the
presence of severe thunderstorms forcing the aircraft to divert
to the south. Lightning
activity was strong based on stormscope detections too numerous
to count. Unfortunately,
the aircraft was forced to pass upwind of the storms. Only
one occasion occurred where a handful of lightning strikes occurred
upwind of the aircraft. Shortly thereafter, NO values in excess of 500 pptv were encountered.
As expected from ECMWF predictions, an intrusion
of stratospheric air was encountered over the southwest US with
ozone values above 200 ppbv between 20-25Kft. Clear-air
turbulence was also encountered within stratospheric air (110-120
ppbv ozone) which may have contributed to enhanced mixing of stratospheric
and tropospheric air.
