PASE Update, August 20, 2007

We've reached the half way point in the scheduled deployment interval, and despite the late arrival of the C-130 we are back on schedule.  Flight RF06 was conducted today with an 0200 takeoff local time.  The SICIMS instruments were not functional on this flight due to a computer problem, but it was decided that we should take advantage of all of the logistical arrangements for this challenging mission and fly anyway.  The research flight hour total now sits at 52.5 hours with roughly 7 flights of 9 hours each remaining.  I'm glad to say that the SICIMS is now back on line and will be ready for the next flight.  Tomorrow is a crew change with most of the RAF crew swapping out.  We arranged enough overlap in key positions to keep things running smoothly.  The flight schedule for the rest of the week has been adjusted to allow the next crew to get settled in and to make use of some parts arriving on the Air Pacific flight that brings everyone to the island.  RF 07 is schedule to go on Friday (local time) at 0800.  With the pre-dawn flight, I'm happy to say that we now have at least one solid case on each of the project's major objectives.  There have been a few surprises on the science side with some ground breaking results........ I'm going to leave that discussion to Alan Bandy.  Our goal now is to obtain more data to add extra weight to the case studies already in hand. 

Pavel takes over for me tomorrow and will be making all future PASE updates.