Flight Track:
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Summary:
We departed Will Rogers without the P-3 and headed toward Altus to join the ground crew which departed earlier for Wichita Falls. The Electra flew to the west of a cloud mass and immediately encountered strong convection upon descent into northwest Texas. We flew many Doppler legs beginning at approximately 2045 UTC along intense convective storms that appeared to briefly acquire supercellular characteristics. This was the first encounter of these types of storms by the Electra pilots. The flight legs were oriented approximately northeast to southwest. There were several legs flown between the two storms that could result in a unique Doppler synthesis on both sides of the storms.The Electra tried to team up with the P-3 to fly a pre-convective pattern along the dryline, however, dust could be seen at altitudes close to 15,000'. The pilots for both aircraft did not want to penetrate the dust. A beautiful view of the convective storms developing along the leading edge of the dust could be seen from the aircraft. The Electra flew from west to east through the dryline in an attempt to collect some Doppler data on the structure of these storms.
At the end of the mission, the P-3 and Electra were finally able to execute a practice coordinate flight with the Electra trailing the P-3 by 4-5 miles. The pilots seemed pleased with the test and we are now ready to execute the pattern on a supercell storm as documented in the Operation Plans. Radio communication and GPS dropouts continue to plague the mission.
Roger Wakimoto