Campaign diary on 07 September 2008

Unfortunately, even in a city like Tokyo the polishing materials did not seem to be available on a Sunday. Timing is not great as there is finally a tropical storm in sight after waiting more than two weeks. Well, actually there are two in the forecast now, one approaching Japan from the southeast that the ET group is particularly keen on, and another on near the Phillipines that could evolve into a recurvature event, the primary interest of JMA. We had a tough decision to make, either giving the wind lidar another day and a chance for repairs and skipping a mission on Tuesday, or installing the DIAL without wind lidar, which means no chance for wind lidar observations until the events are over. Some frustration was appearant, Andreas was understandably not looking forward to integrate the DIAL, then take it out for an integration of the wind lidar after repairs and putting it back in a second time. Doris lost her smile when the grouped leaned towards another repair day instead of the mission and personally I was not really happy about either option. But in the end, we peacefully came to a decision and all agreed that the DIAL should be installed again as the chances for the wind lidar are too low.

Installing the DIAL in the aircraft was already started in the afternoon to be ready for the tuesday flight. People involved in the DIAL installation were understandably not very happy with this additional work, especially with the outlook that it has to remove and installed again for the installation of the wind lidar after repairs. Things would be easier, if the wind lidar would not sit beneath the DIAL. Nevertheless we had a nice BBQ in the courtyard of the hotel. After announcing the BBQ I though people would loose the last remaining trust in the meteorologist among us as it started raining minutes after the e-mail was sent - but in the end we had a great evening beneath the roof of the BBQ place nevertheless. Maybe even a little too good as some of us will be missing patience for discussions in the daily planning meeting tomorrow morning.

Author: Martin W.