Campaign diary on 1 September 2008

The status of the wind lidar is still unclear. Thus it was decided to perform a targeting mission tomorrow that could also finally clear up how to proceed with the wind lidar. The air space west of Japan has several restricted military training areas, and models seem to have a weakness for sending the Falcon there. Thus we dared to apply for a permission to enter, which also seemed to be approved by Atsugi AirOps and the ATC system. But then the drama started. ATC called Bessho-san, who sends a notification to ATC in parallel to the flight plan submission by the pilots, and tells him that we can not enter. AirOps in Atsugi gives contrary information however and does not see any problems. In the end, the pilots prepare an alternative flight plan as a backup - which already appears in the system as final flight plan in the next morning. We realize that this procedure with parallel submission by DLR and JMA simply does not work. An emergency meeting is scheduled for tomorrow.

Christian, Simon, Florian, Reinhold and Martin made a trip to Kamakura in the afternoon, visited the huge Budda statue and a temple there in humid heat. The desire for swimming quickly reduced when seeing the dirty waters at the beach, but we had great running Sushi for dinner. One could say, nearly a perfect afternoon and evening, if it had not been interrupted by the mess with ATC.

Author: Martin W.