Today was the first research flight, which went pretty well overall. We had one sonde not transmit all the way to the surface, with the last data point at ~980mb (and sporadic data for a bit before that). There were only 31 sondes dropped, because the last drop point was scheduled for so close to the end that we would’ve been on the ground before the drop had finished. All of the data should now be uploaded to ftp://ftp.eol.ucar.edu/pub/data/incoming/otrec/EOL_data/AVAPS_data/raw_files (and also to all of the mirrors as noted in the data flow diagram).

Having the QC being done onboard the aircraft for the first flight worked well, and I think was nicer than having it done on the ground. Since this was the first flight, being able to answer questions in quickly person was helpful. 

The launcher carriage did get stuck once, when the entire bin of sondes was dropped. I think this was caused by the top solenoid being stuck open, as the sondes with full packaging during the ferry flight didn’t fit as well. I thought I had checked that prior to the flight, but must have missed one bin. Tomorrow is a maintenance day, so I will go out and make sure everything is working as expected.

The next pair of flights is currently scheduled for Sunday (08/11) and Monday (08/12). Today’s flight was shorter than expected, which means the possibility of enough flight hours for an extra pair of flights.