1/26/01 - Daily 1:15 pm all-hands meetings have continued
under the leadership of Darrell Winfield All days have been
one and 1/2-shift, with work planned on 1/27 and 1/28 Lab
work by PI teams continues beyond one shift as each team determines
is appropriate
Nine of the experinent teams have been on-site at sometime during
the week All racks and inlets are onboard The Apel team arrived
1/22 and uploaded on 1/24 Each team continues final rack
preparations as needed Brune installed a measurement of opportunity
for NO and NOx with no significant difficulty The ICATS rack
is ready for their go-no go flight test on 2/1 Ali Aknan and John
Barrick will operate the Project Data System during that flight
to insure ICATS provides the required functionalities The
ICATS Ground Operations Go/No Go Review was held 1/22 and was approved
to continue preparations, even though it was not complete and flight
worthy at that review as planned The Sandholm lasers have
been uploaded and NO appears near completion, while NO2 needs much
more work, as expected The Sachse DLH instrument will arrive
2/4 in plenty of time for installation prior to the first test
flight Eleven work tasks remain for various sheet metal and
related work for the PIs and plane
DIAL completed significant modifications for its power handling
black boxes during the week DIAL was found to be continuing
to trip the plane circuit breakers when it powered up(due to large
initial spike) Even though this was not new behavior, a Discrepancy
Report was issued, requiring a fix Several fixes were required
before the circuit breakers did not trip The fix requires
a special operational procedure(Mission Manager institutes time
delay, which wll be acceptable for this mission, but additional
fixes will be required for future missions to remove the man from
the loop
Significant work remains to develop a transport plan for Blake's
snakes The plan is shaping up to be a mix of routine courier, FEDEX,
USAF cargo transport and C-130 transport Care is being exercised
to insure the PI believes that replacement of the courier approach
to save money does not introduce unknown or unacceptable risk,
and thereby dilute PI responsibility for success The number
of snakes available will not permit delays due to customs or lost
cargo Couriers under the control of the PI take multiple
snakes aboard as excess baggage and personally deal with transport
to and from the plane and customs Replacement of the courier
approach requires incresaed reliance on commercial transportation
and puts the snakes in the hands of persons not familiar with,
or especially committed to, the hardware
The Hazardous Materials CCB was completed with no problems
The site visit to Hong Kong and Okinawa was completed and a debrief
conference call will be held 1/29 Okinawa support is committed
for three visits Hong Kong support of the aircraft is now
committed as is PI laboratory workspace It remains to be
seen how we will deal with hazardous materials restrictions in
this workspace
The Tech Brief (Mission summary and status of preparations for
management and participants) will be held on 1/29 The all-up
electrical power check will be on 1/30 Rollout, weight and
balance will be on 1/31 The Engineering Check Flight will
be on 2/1 in the morning and the ICATS Go-No Go test flight will
be in the afternoon A Pilot Prof Flight Test will be on 2/2
In summary, rack and inlets upload was completed as planned by
1/25; however, PIs continue to make final installations and adjustments NO
delays are anticipated for the test flights next week Next
week will begin flights of the plane with the result that PIs will
have less time to work in the plane There are no current
problems which would appear to jeporidize on-time deployment