Short bye to Pico - My visit at Graciosa and the Helicopter-flight on Monday, 17th of July


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 should be a very special one to - I was allowed to join the measurement flight that was planned for 2pm. After we took off we picked up SMART Helios and ACTOS.
There were no clouds to measure near the island so we started to go north and increased hight. We did some aerosol-flights from north to south at around 7000 ft - during the rise up the first inversion was at around 4700 ft. Half an hour later we went down to 5000 ft and a little later to 4000 ft followed by a searching for clouds to measure. Unfortunately the clouds we could locate were still to far away so we decided to measure one above the island.
Almost back again on Pico island
At the end we did another aerosol-flight at around 3000 ft and flew parallel to the coast of Graciosa.
Landing the instruments took a little but went very well in the end - the helicopter landed on schedule at 4 pm.

For me it very interesting to join one of the helicopter-flights and I was really happy about that the scientist-group offered me this opportunity. I am grateful for this experience and that I were able to visit the whole group at Graciosa!

Thank you very much and good luck with the ongoing measurements until the end of the campaign!






Text and pictures: Oliver




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