Campaign diary on 20 August 2008

Quite an exausting day between Japanese humid heat, American-style air-condition and jet-lag. Allthough the team enjoyed great support of LT Koonce and other people on the base, some things were not easy to solve. The team could not get cards to leave the base or buy anything in Navy stores, the original operations center was occupied and the new one too small. However, cars could be obtained and in the afternoon an additional room for the operations center was found. The DLR equipment (container, air freight) had arrived and the team started unpacking - see images.

In the evening, LT Koonce saved the DLR team from starving and addictive withdrawal syndromes by personally going shopping for the DLR team - many thanks!

Later in the evening, dramatic news arrived. The wind lidar wasn't working at all during the test flight in Germany and the take-off for Japan was endangered. A delay of that take-off would have led to a delay of at least several days as new transfer right for Russia would have been needed. Fortunately, people at DLR could repair the cause of the proplem, a malfunction of the GPS unit (that was working fine on the day before). An additional test flight wasn't possible in time and in the end it was decided that the Falcon would leave for Japan without testing the system in air. Let's keep fingers crossed!

Author: Martin W.