Thursday, May 25

T-28 Flight 747

Project Flight 2

Take Off ~ 23:50 GMT

Return to Base: 00:20 GMT

Pilot: Tom Root

 

 

A short flight was made into a weak convective cloud west of CHILL. The cloud was collapsing by the time the aircraft reached the target area. Several passes at the -14 C and -9 C levels were made with limited time in-cloud.   Some precipitation was encountered. The pilot reported getting raindrops at 23:48 UTC at 19,000 feet and the airplane entered the cloud at 23:50:27. The cloud was electrified with electric field magnitude up to 50 kV/m, with E_z generally being negative at the airplane's altitude of about 6 km.   Negative electric field indicates positive charge above the airplane or negative charge below the airplane.

 

 

The HVPS measured many charged particles. Generally, the particles were charged with both signs of charge at any location of the cloud.   It appears that at locations of large electric field, the charge magnitudes are larger. But there are cases where particles’ charge was large while the ambient electric field is weak.   Out of 7381-recorded charged particles, 89% of them are smaller that 4 millimeter in diameter.

 

 

One lightning flash is visible in the flight video near 23:45:10. Pstatic is audible on the recorded voice channel during some precipitation encounters. Data were of generally good quality.

 

 

The mobile mesonet and electrical ballooning teams were in the vicinity, but not focused on the same cloud remnant in which the aircraft worked. There was a balloon launch into anvil cloud from a site 4 miles north of Stratton at 23:45.