During CONTRAST, the NSF/NCAR GV HIAPER flew forward, left, down, and right-facing digital cameras for in-flight image capture.

The forward camera is a Point Grey Research Hi-Res Flea Hi-Color, 1024x768 resolution. The Navitar DO-412 lens has a focal length of 4 mm and the field of view is about 62 x 48 degrees with some barrel distortion. This camera is located on the right wing pylon.

The right-facing camera is a Point Grey Research Flea 3 (FL3-FW-14S3C-C) - Color, 1280 x 960 resolution equipped with an Edmund Optics 6mm lens (#67-709). The field of view is 68 x 51 degrees with approximately 6% barrel distortion. This camera was looking out a right-side cabin window, tipped slightly down and aft from perpendicular to the fuselage.

The left-facing camera is a Point Grey Research Hi-Res Flea Hi-Color, 1024x768 resolution, same as the forward camera. This camera was looking out a left-side cabin window, tipped slightly down and aft from perpendicular to the fuselage.

The down-facing camera is a Point Grey Research Dragonfly 2 - Color, 1024 x 768 resolution. The Edmund Optics NT58-841 micro lens has a 3.6 mm focal length and 85° horizontal field of view with 46% distortion on the diagonal and 25% at full field horizontal. This camera was located in the left wing pylon.

Images were acquired once per second and stored as JPEG-compressed files, roughly 100 kB each. No image processing was performed beyond converting the raw pixel data to 24 bit color images. Applying a sharpening filter as is ordinarily done by consumer digital cameras will considerably improve the appearance. The UTC date and time are encoded in the filename as YYMMDD-HHMMSS.jpg.


The movies are playable with Quicktime, Windows Media Player, mplayer, VLC, and others.

Flight Specific Comments:

RF01 174235-190523
Forward camera gap due to restart required by landing in California. Left, down, and right stayed on.
Landing in California: 17:43
Takeoff in California: 18:57

RF02 011613-023618
Forward camera gap due to restart required by landing on Wake Island. Left, down, and right stayed on.
Landing on Wake Island: 01:16
Takeoff on Wake Island: 02:36

RF03
Cameras aren't quite keeping up at 1 Hz - occasionally miss a picture, most often the forward one.

RF06
Small gap due to stop and start of cameras after takeoff.

RF07
23:53Z Restart Cameras
00:06Z Camera display frozen, restart

RF09
00:05Z Restart Cameras
00:38Z Restart Cameras

RF10
All camera recording stopped 01:00. It resumed ~01:17 after two stop/start operations.

RF13
Camera was turned off for the first few hours because this was a night flight.

Cameras was turn back on at 5:09 AM to capture low-light images before full sun rise. Unfortunately, the images could not be recorded at first due to a software setting. Camera recording started when day light intensity increased.

RF15
Small gap due to stop and start of cameras after takeoff.

For questions, please contact:

Stuart Beaton or Janine Aquino
NCAR/EOL/RAF