Interoffice Memo

Date: 8/17/01

To: Dave Carlson

Cc: Brigitte Baeuerle

From: Lucas Swartwood

I had hoped to thank you in person for the great opportunity of working in ATD this summer, however, you were on vacation and now I’m on my way back to Florida to begin classes at USF. The experience I gained at ATD will enhance my education and better prepare me in defining a career path in mechanical engineering for the future.

I truly valued the time that Jack Fox and other shop staff spent with me in working on various projects such as the ballaster for the diftsonde. As you know, I assisted Amanda Cox with the successful deployment of AIMR to the SGP site in Oklahoma. The instrument operated well and she was able to collect data comparing AIMR to other microwave instruments at the site. Amanda had mentioned the possibility of the use of a “rotating” AIMR in IHOP that would be in the same field of view as S-Pol’s. This has challenged my mind with a variety of solutions on how to accomplish such a task. I also appreciated Mike Strong’s patience and guidance while working on SABL. I actually designed, and had the shop build a stand for SABL’s telescope and mirror to balance it when offloaded from the aircraft and for use in the lab. Along with the stand design, I also drew up a window cover for SABL enabling the laser to be shot into the cover during testing. The past week I was involved with building a hinged housing for a TAOS winch, designed cabinets, installed carpets, and inlet and outlet hardware holes for the TAOS trailer for future projects. During my last week, I continued testing the ballaster under temperature conditions.

Stall in ATD were very supportive in making me feel like I was part of the team; they are a great bunch of people and seemed to care about proper training for intern students like myself. I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge and have really enjoyed myself this summer. This is a great program Brigitte has put together and hope for an opportunity to become involved once again in the future.