Final flight or one more?



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 correct the data for any movement. Hence, the research flight for Sunday was cancelled and we started with packing.


The cloud in the lee of the island

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