Campaign diary on 25 August 2008

The team is planning the first mission on the following day. The intention is to fly a secondary imission to also test the procedures for obtaining flight permissions etc. The mission objective is a combination of targeting and ridge-building and we're quite happy that a good chance to fly could be found within the first days. Some aspects of flying a civil aircraft under the satus of forces agrement remain unclear, but in the evening we actually received an approval for the flight plan. Unfortunately, it turned out that there is a training area west of northern Japan that extends from Russian airspace to quite close to the coast so that no dropsondes can be launched anywhere west of northern Japan. The first response to the request for access was that at least a week notice (!) would be required. This will not be feasable in practice and we hope to find a solution together with our JMA.

Author: Martin W.