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Final flight or one more?

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Below the helicopter Eye-to-eye with a cloud The helicopter returned from Pico with everyone smiling. As ACTOS and SMART-HELIOS were ready for take-off, the smile of the pilots got a bit smaller due to their reduced lunch break. But nevertheless, we started at 12:55. As the Stratocumulus was too far to the north, we decided to make some Aerosol-legs. In total we did four of them on 7000 ft, 4000 ft, 2000 ft and 1000 ft, so one above the inversion and 3 below. We saw some slashes of wales. But every time we got closer, they disappeared again. During our flights we overflew and circumnavigated some single cumulus clouds. In the end, the only stratocumulus like cloud was in the lee of the island. On our way back, we sampled this cloud flying upstream to the island. Then we safely returned to the airport after almost two hours. SMART-HELIOS worked again the whole time with a reduced sensor package, while the inertial moment unit of ACTOS failed. Thus, it will be hard to corre
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It’s hard work to get good data

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At some days, it is particularly hard work to get good data. Today was such a day. As the weather was still promising after the morning flight, we decided to have a second flight in the afternoon. Some stratocumulus cloud fields were present, so we cloud people wanted to go for catching some of them. The plan was to start directly after lunch break, but while sweating in the helicopter, we had to wait for the controller to finish lunchtime as well. Then, after starting the engines, a beep and a red light indicated a problem with one of the two power generators. The heli can fly with only one generator and a battery as backup, but the ACTOS data monitoring had switched to battery mode. Finally, after the usual start procedure “HELIOS airborne – continue climbing – ACTOS airborne” the ground crew noticed, that ACTOS wasn’t pointing into the direction of flight, so we decided to return to the airfield. The ground crew couldn’t find any suspicious failures and ACTOS was flying in
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Short bye to Pico - My visit at Graciosa and the Helicopter-flight on Monday, 17th of July

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Clouds over Graciosa - the only clouds that were close enough that day Last week Silvia asked me if I am interested in visiting the scientist-group at Graciosa and if I want to see how research and daily work is going on at Graciosa-airport. After shortly thinking about it (and some slight worries, that in the meantime when I am at Graciosa there could be another shut-down at the ICO-Station on Pico mountain) Birgit organized the flights. The trip to Graciosa took a whole day, because there were no direct flights from Pico to Graciosa and so I started around 9 am. First I had to take the ferry from Madalena to Horta and had my first flight from Faial to Terceira. After waiting a few hours at Terceira-airport I took of at 16:10pm and 30 minutes later I arrived at Graciosa. View from the helicopter It was nice to see how the group worked together and after a nice welcome, they introduced me a little in how everything works at the airport. The next day
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A usual day hiking up to the ICO- Station on the Pico Mountain

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Looking up to the top Every time it starts with checking the forecasts as well as the webcams in the evening the day before the next hike to figure out how the weather situation is or will be on top of Pico. Once again we do this in the morning and so the hiking procedure is started. Together we have a short breakfast and prepare the food for the day always with regard to the total weight of the backpack in the end when we gathered everything else we need up at the station that day (sometimes for example we have to bring some tools). With our car we drive up to the Casa da Montanha, filling the documents for hiking up and get our GPS-tracker. ICO-Station Then the hardest part starts: the hiking root definitely needs some experience because of its steep parts, the sharp rocks and also the loose stones (my advice: it is always better to trust the rocks because you have more grip). Another thing is that the weather can change fast and at anytime. Normal
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