Saturday 19 November 2011

High Above The Clouds Of Lake Constance

The sudden descent of fog yesterday led to the decision to start today's test flights as early as possible.
Good weather conditions in the morning sped up the preparations of the experimenters. Some covers for the instrument racks were attached right before the start.

The Zeppelin was equipped yesterday with the SOA (secondary organic aerosol) package. Today it flew to the forest Altdorf Wald to measure at different heights. Afterwards the airship returned to the hangar where the pilot and the accompanying experimentalists were exchanged, to give other experimentalists the chance to observe their instruments on the flight. The instruments mostly performed well at different heights and different speed.  NOx, O3 and CO showed interesting changes during profile measurements. 

The second flight leg led the Zeppelin to the Lake Constance, which was completely covered with fog. Here the maximum flight altitude of 4700ft was reached, and the Zeppelin descended until it dipped into the mist. At 3.30 pm the airship returned in the Hangar just before the fog descended again.


Until late in the evening the airship was tooled to change from the SOA package to the photochemistry package.
 

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