In this flight pattern, the Convair-580 takes off from Barrow (BR) after refueling, flies several legs within clouds between 1-2 km high, then returns to base at Fairbanks. (Larger image.)

With just one month before the start of the Indirect and Semi-direct Aerosol Campaign (ISDAC), the ARM Aerial Vehicles Program (AVP) is finalizing the necessary contract arrangements, instrumentation integration activities, and flight planning scenarios. More than 80 scientists and logistics personnel will gather in Fairbanks, Alaska, to participate in the April campaign, which will obtain airborne and ground-based measurements of aerosol and cloud properties in the vicinity of the ACRF site in Barrow, Alaska. These data will be used to improve models that simulate Arctic cloud processes.

A Convair-580 provided by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada will carry more than 40 instruments for measuring cloud and aerosol properties during ISDAC. The AVP team worked with NRC to establish the precise weight of the payload and adjust the final instrument package to stay within the combined fuel/payload weights limits. Some of the instruments have never been deployed on an aircraft science mission before. One such instrument is the Single Particle Laser Ablation Time-of-flight mass spectrometer, or SPLAT, which obtains size-resolved aerosol composition data. A successful maiden voyage on Battelle’s Gulfstream-1 with the instrument in early February was welcome news to the ISDAC science team. Dozens of other instruments in addition to the SPLAT will be installed on the Convair at its home base in Ottawa, Canada, before it makes the transit flight to Fairbanks in late March.

Related NOAA and NASA aircraft studies based out of Fairbanks at the same time as ISDAC required additional coordination for both logistics and flight planning. Negotiations and agreements for accommodations, hangar and office space were completed in February, and nearly a dozen coordinated flights plans were developed among the agencies to balance their respective science objectives with weather conditions and safety. These plans are a requirement for approval of the flight safety plan required by DOE, and were used February 28-29 during a flight planning meeting in Ottawa, Canada. This meeting provided the ISDAC science team an opportunity for to simulate the forecasting and mission selection process that will occur daily during the month-long campaign. Final instrument integration activities and test flights were also discussed.