Project # 2006-503 T-REX Terrain-induced Rotor EXperiment Principal Investigator(s):   Vanda Grubišic´, et al. NSF/NCAR Gulfstream-V (N677F)

The camera is a Point Grey Research Hi-Res Flea - Color, 1024x768 resolution.  The Navitar DO-412 lens has a focal length of 4 mm.  The FOV is about 62° horizontally and 48° vertically with some barrel distortion.

The camera was looking out a window ahead of the wing on the left side of the aircraft.  It was pointing approximately perpendicular to the aircraft longitudinal axis and slightly downward, about 8° below horizontal.

Images were acquired once per second and stored as JPEG-compressed files, roughly 50 kB each.  No processing of the images was performed beyond converting the raw pixel signal into a 24 bit color image.  The UTC date and time are encoded in the filename as YYMMDD-HHMMSS.jpg.  These are the archived images stored in one-hour TAR files.

For the MPEG-4 movies each image was processed with the linux ImageMagick toolkit.  The image was first scaled by 50% to 512 x 384 pixels.  Sharpening and gamma adjustments were then performed [SHARPEN(0.0x1.0), GAMMA(1.3)].  Each image was then annotated on the left side of the image with the flight data corresponding to the time derived from the image name.  The annotated images were compiled with ffmpeg into MPEG 4 movies at 24 frames/s and 1500 kb/s data rate.

The movies can be played by Quicktime 6.5 or later (Mac and Windows), xine (linux), or RealPlayer 10.5 and later (Windows OK, Mac not tried).

S. Beaton
NCAR/RAF
2006-10-18

Individual flight comments:

RF01 - The computer clock not synced, so the video lags the annotation data by about 30 seconds.  Some gaps in data.

RF02 - No time sync at the beginning, so video lags data by about 20 seconds, but this is fixed at 21:48.

RF03 - There is a 10 minute gap late in the movie due to restarting the computer.  Video stopped at 2400 on account of darkness.

RF04 - Video ends at 02:20 on account of darkness.

RF05 - Images only available from 15:10 to 15:23.  The computer was rebooted by the user, and the camera image acquisition program was not restarted.

RF06 - Images from takeoff until 22:10:40 when the disk ran out of inodes, though only 12% full.  Two and a half hour gap from 17:00 to 19:30, unknown cause.

RF07 - No comments

RF08 - No comments

RF09 - Ends at 02:30 on account of darkness.

RF10 - Ends at 03:00 on account of darkness.

RF11 - No comments

RF12 - No comments

TF04 - No comments