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SUBJECT : Meeting, Friday, 23 July 2010 |
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PREDICT UPDATE MEETING - July |
PARTICIPANTS
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Name |
Affiliation |
Name |
Affiliation |
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Aquino, Janine |
NCAR |
Baeuerle, Brigitte |
NCAR |
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Bosart, Lance |
SUNYA |
Boynton, Henry |
NCAR |
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Cooper, Al |
NCAR |
Flanigan, Dennis |
NCAR |
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Hanson, Mary |
NCAR |
Jensen, Jørgen |
NCAR |
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Klotz, Randy |
NCAR |
Meitín, José |
NCAR |
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Moore, Jim |
NCAR |
Norman, Susan |
NCAR |
|
Rockwell, Alison |
NCAR |
Salazar, Vidal |
NCAR |
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Schanot, Allen |
NCAR |
StMartin, Briesa |
NCAR |
| Stossmeister, Greg |
NCAR |
Twohy, Cindy |
OSU |
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Velden, Chris |
Wisconsin/CIMSS |
Williams, Steve |
NCAR |
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MEETING SUMMARY : |
| Status from EOL Facilities RAF: Upload, safety brief, flight tests, diplomatic clearances, ATC, shipping... ISF: dropsondes, ASPEN, student hires, ... CDS: Field Catalog, XChat, GTS data submittal, ASPEN, FTP directories.... FPS: STX security, Operations Center, Forecaster exercise, tri-agency dry-run Other Items |
| Updates from Facilities: Research Aviation Facility: Instrument upload progressing nicely. Instrument installations completed by Friday afternoon or Monday early morning. Schedule: Monday 26 July- Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) test, to ensure that nothing impacts pilot's radio, etc. Tuesday 27 July- Systems Acceptance Review (SAR). Instrument PIs need to provide status, are there any outstanding issues. Wednesday 28 July- morning , Postponed All-Hands Informational meeting on St Croix. Wednesday 28 July - 10:30 am safety briefing for all personnel that will fly on GV. Thursday 29 July - (Flight Readiness Review). A safety review to confirm that aircraft and payload is safe for flight. Instrument providers need not be present. RAF pilots safety review meeting this afternoon (Fri 23 July), to go through procedures and what kind of weather will we fly through, what products do we need. PREDICT hurricane evacuation plan for UCAR staff, UCAR safety office commented, UCAR legal reviewed it, ready for release. When would we evacuate UCAR staff from St. Croix? Forecast Cat. 1 or less- Ride it out Forecast Cat. 2 or above- Evacuate, 1st choice- commercial aircraft; absolute crisis: charter aircraft; life and limp - shuttle GV UCAR plan: Cannot make decision for non-UCAR personnel, but will have admin staff on site to assist others with evacuation plans. Shipping: Containers left Palm Beach, FL on Thurs 22 July will arrive in St Croix Monday 26 July (Tropical Shipping, local agent), delivery to STX Bohlke on Friday 30 July. Air Shipments will be within the next two weeks, last day to ship is August 4. Pilots: RAF had planned for the three pilots in first and last two weeks; Uncertain when the C-130 will come back from maintenance in California. RAF can hire one contract pilot, may not have full complement of pilots needed during PREDICT, will minimize impact on PREDICT. Radar images from pilot station to back of aircraft, making progress but slow; still working on it, display of range and elevations angle not included, for PREDICT only image data and will have to ask pilots to keep radar on standard settings. Mission coordinators will need to know how far away the radar is pointing. Mission critical but still in progress. (AI.69) Mission coordinator data products follow-up meeting TBD (Jensen) Montserrat volcano eruption : what would be the policy and avoidance issues? Will deal with it as it happens, won't fly through ash plumes, case by case. the FAA will cover avoidance regions but any information from forecast team will be useful. Depending on winds, ash plume could drift to St Croix, damage to engines. NRL Satellite group (Hawkins) group would have some useful guidance products. Diplomatic clearances: handed in to NSF several months back. Typically will receive foreign clearances a few days before deployment; will check with NSF liaison when closer to start of project. (AI.70) Jensen to send list of country clearance requests to Meitin (AI.50) Summary of discussions with impacted ATC areas has been prepared by NCAR pilots. Includes procedures for genesis mission when CARCAH coordination is unlikely. (AI.71) Meitín has sent out summary to NASA collaborators (AI.66) NASA/ ESPO is scheduling a pilots deconfliction telecon during the last week of July. Logistics Briesa St Martin reminds everyone that the Buccaneer Hotel contract is for the first two adults free (short term family members), additional adults in the room are $80, children $20 each. All Travel Authorizations for UCAR staff are completed. NCAR travel office wants vouchers completed as soon as travel concludes due to the large amounts of advance payments. (AI.72) Admin assistants should get a complete list from the hotel of PREDICT participants. Computing, Data and Software Facility: Field catalog is up and running (for the forecaster exercise). Have compiled a good list of additional products based on interactions with the forecast team. Busy ingesting the numerical model products, have developed new authoring form for the Pouch Synopsis Summary and will continue making additional modifications. ASPEN processing software: CTM have established (anonymous) FTP subdirectories (AI.73) for AVAPS D-files and for outgoing Skew-T plots for each aircraft. CDS DMG has contacted NWS telecommunications gateway and NCEP, eagerly awaiting dropsonde files and would like to do a test, we plan send a sample for message syntax, will use test flights (Mon Aug 2 first GV test flight), also vibration and pilot proficienty test, then dropsonde test in the afternoon. Second testflight has not been scheduled, probably 2-3 days later. Need to alert ECMWF and UK Met Office to begin looking on GTS for dropsonde reports. According to Charlie Martin, platform-independent version of ASPEN is available through the EOL software download website. Kate Young is completing some evaluations, but looks ready for use. XChat, still need to connect to NOAA side IRC server (AI.22) Since Mark Bradford's departure, Dennis Flanigan will continue interactions with NOAA/AOC. (AI.74) Meitín will provide contact information for Sean McMillan at AOC. NCAR XChat login is available through the Mibbit web link on the PREDICT Field Catalog front page <http://catalog.eol.ucar.edu/predict/>. This provides access to PREDICT, GV, DC8, GRIP, GHAWK and other chatrooms Systems Administration: Initial large equiopment shipment has gone with RAF seatainers, finalizing LAN equipment testing will be boxed up with laptops for air shipment. The Buccaneer Hotel has changed the location of the Operations Center from near the Lobby (Arcade Room) to the Beach Conference Room; which is 4x larger, but farther from the main building and closer to the shore. Field Project Services Facility: Forecast Team "mock exercise" took place Mon-Wed 19-21 July. Considered quite successful, procedures and daily schedules were worked out (AI.47). It was very helpful to get everyone together. Jason Dunion did an excellent job in preparing daily briefing; coordinating the weblinks that are available, in one common place and will send additional URLs. Forecast team will split into forecasting duties and flight support duties. CDS will provide 2 laptops for the forecast team. The tri-agency dry run telecons 16 UTC will continue daily until 30 July with weather briefing and flight planning Meitín has been in contact with US Customs and Border Patrol (in St Croix) about security badges. Several NCAR personnel have submitted forms for TSA badges to the Virgin Islands Port Authority (AI.60). Badged staff will escort science crew to and from aircraft. Student hires: dropsonde students assistants have small EOL grants (purchase orders) that their to home institution can charge against. Each student assistant will deploy to STX for three weeks with one week overlap, Primary responsibility is dropsonde quality control processing and assist dropsonde tech during missions. Education and Outreach: The general public outreach PREDICT website: http://www.eol.ucar.edu/predict is now available, along the PREDICT project information and logistics webite. Check out the YouTube video with Chris Davis narrating PREDICT objectives General interest blogging information needed from participants to make it worthwhile. Please contact Alison Rockwell <rockwell AT ucar.edu> END OF REPORT |
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