1998 Instrumentation Tests
Overview  | Research Flights  | Reports
Overview
The armored T-28 deployed to Ft. Collins-Loveland Airport (FNL), for two weeks in June, 1998, for flight tests of new and refurbished research equipment.  New equipment included a Science Engineering Associates (SEA) data acquisition system, a Droplet Measurement Technologies (DMT) liquid water probe, a video recording system,  a prototype Stratton Park Engineering Corporation High Volume Particle Spectrometer Probe (HVPS), and two systems of electric field meters mounted in underwing pods from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMIMT).  A newly refurbished Particle Measuring Systems, Inc. (PMS) Forward Scattering Spectrometer Probe (FSSP), was also flown for the first time.

In-flight guidance was available to the pilots from the ground, via radio link with the CSU-CHILL S-band meteorological research radar. Six research flights in small to large convective storms, in the vicinity of the CHILL radar, were carried out within the two-week program.

Most of the equipment worked well, in some cases after some tinkering. The NMIMT field meter pods proved to have a negative effect on aircraft performance and handling and caused the facility to re-direct its efforts to improve the T-28 electric field meter system.  Plans to build pod meters for the T-28 were changed and instead a 6th meter was added to the system of 5 meters mounted at various locations on the airframe. Also, the unrefurbished PMS OAP-2D-C two-dimensional particle imaging probe showed erratic behavior, leading to a subsequent significant refurbishment.

Research Flights
  • Flight 711 - 6/11/98
  • Flight 712 - 6/12/98
  • Flight 713 - 6/12/98
  • Flight 714 - 6/17/98
  • Flight 716 - 6/21/98
  • Flight 717 - 6/22/98
Reports
Data from Flight 717 on 6/22/98 was part of the basis for a presentation at a radar meteorology conference in 1999:

Kennedy, P. C., A. Detwiler and P. L. Smith, 1999: Radar and aircraft observations of microphysical evolution in updraft regions of a High Plains multicellular thunderstorm.
Preprints, 29th International Conference on Radar Meteorology.12-16 July, 1999, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  American Meteorological Society, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. 355-357.

If you have questions in regard to the content of this page, or would like more information, please e-mail donna.kliche@sdsmt.edu or andrew.detwiler@sdsmt.edu