head clearing slightly. clouds, not so much.

Apr. 9th
Kanger

Morning windchill:  -31 F
Flight hours:  18.2
Number of kleenex used:  honestly, a new PR.  It was unreal.
Sonicare:  down to one bar
Beard status: Actual!  (I even had to do some maintenance today.  That's when it's official.)


I decided not to fly this morning.  I'm desperately trying to beat a savage cold, for one thing, and a flight where they just go to a magnetically-benign part of the ocean and fly around to test instruments sounded boring.  But I'll let Operation IceBridge Project Scientist Michael Studinger tell you what I missed:

"This morning we woke up to the good news that a government shutdown has been averted and we began our usual aircraft warm-up routine at 5:15 am LT. The forecast was hopeless for all science missions from Kangerlussuaq and we decided to do a radar calibration and magnetic compensation flight which we cannot combine with a normal survey flight because of the extreme roll maneuvers. After flying on straight lines with a 15º limit on bank angles (almost) everyone enjoyed the 60 and 90º roll maneuvers at FL190 over water to determine the radiation pattern of the MCoRDS antenna array. During these maneuvers “the ship” rapidly loses altitude and drops down like a rock with 1G. The view from the cockpit is priceless.

The weather forecast for tomorrow looks poor and the airfield is closed on Sundays in Kangerlussuaq. Thus, tomorrow will be a hard down day for crew rest."

In other business, it was brought to my attention today that I haven't even described what Operation IceBridge is in any of my posts.  (One would think I might have started with that.)  Soon, I'll give it my best shot, but for now I'll just say they fly around in aircraft measuring land and sea ice with a bunch of lasers and things

But if you want to read what a real professional blogger has to say on IceBridge, check out Kathryn's excellent entries on the official OIB blog.  We've got some of our timelapses there too.

So before I get some sleep, here are some shots of yesterday's absolutely stunning flight.  The first shot is from Dr. Studinger himself, who can often be found shooting through the only window on the plane with 'optical glass,' meaning it's not quite as smudged and scratched as the rest of them.

That's a hard shot to follow, so I'll cleanse the palate with this minimalistic selection:

And move out to sea with these two:

And finally, to bed.