May 17, 2002

Krista Laursen
Director, HIAPER Project Office

I am very happy to be able to send this report on the status of HIAPER, the High-performance Instrumented Airborne Platform for Environmental Research. This is the first of what will be monthly updates from the newly-established HIAPER Project Office (HPO) on the status of this project. For those of you who haven't seen the UCAR Quarterly story (Spring 2002 issue) or the April issue of UCAR Staff Notes, the HPO was established in February of this year as a part of NCAR Director Tim Killeen's office. Tim appointed me - Krista Laursen - as Project Director and I have since assembled a staff to work with me here in the Project Office. One of the staff members I am happy to have on board is Dick Friesen, who is now serving as the HIAPER Engineering Manager. Dick and I have both worked with many members of the atmospheric sciences community over the past several years in our previous capacities as RAF project managers, and we are both pleased to be able to continue our interactions with all of you in our new HIAPER positions.

The other members of the HIAPER Project Staff are as follows:

• Harriet Barker, Program Administrator
• Pat Munson, Contract Administrator
• Geoff Cheeseman, Budget Analyst
• Jennifer Oxelson, Webmaster

In most cases, the above staffing assignments reflect a formalization of HIAPER responsibilities that various individuals (specifically, Dick, Harriet, Pat, and Geoff) had already been fulfilling for the preceding two years or so. The above-listed positions and titles represent re-assignments of these individuals to formal positions in the HPO.

Dave Carlson, NCAR/ATD Director, will be continuing to work with HPO staff closely on the planning for HIAPER in his new capacity as the project PI.

All of us in the HPO are extremely happy and excited to have Jennifer Oxelson on staff as our new Webmaster. As I'll discuss more below, you can now see the fruits of Jen's work for us by paying a visit to the new HIAPER Web site.

The HIAPER project offices are located in Foothills Laboratory Building 1 (FL1). Should you ever have any questions about the HIAPER project, I invite you to contact us by phone at 303-497-2005 or to send an email message to hiaperinfo@ucar.edu.

I would now like to provide you with a brief look at recent events and ongoing activities related to this project.

New Web Site Now On-Line

This report marks the inauguration of the new HIAPER Web site, which you can visit at www.hiaper.ucar.edu. I invite each of you to visit this site and provide the HPO with any feedback you may have. Information presented in this site includes the following: HIAPER project background, Project Office staff information, project organization and oversight structure, the HIAPER timeline, HIAPER Advisory Committee (HAC) information and updates, aircraft specifications, a project photo gallery, and more. This site has been designed as a communications tool and will also be used for internal project management purposes. I welcome you to bookmark this site, and I hope you will each be a regular interactive visitor!

One note as you first visit the site. Work is still being done to bring the site's search engine fully on-line. Also, the internal and secure portions of the site are still being implemented and are, as of this writing, not presently available. However, we anticipate having all of these utilities working shortly, and I invite you to re-visit the site in the new few days should you wish to use any of these features of the site.

I want to publicly thank and commend Jen Oxelson for all of her hard work in assembling this very professional looking site in such a short period of time. She has, in my view, created a fantastic home for the HIAPER on the Web.

HIAPER Timeline

With the fiscal year 2002 budget allocation from the NSF, UCAR was able to enter into a contract with Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation for the purchase and modification of a GV. "Our" (UCAR/NCAR) aircraft -- serial number 677 - will roll off of the Gulfstream assembly line in Savannah, Georgia in early June 2002 and will receive its Certificate of Airworthiness (COA) on approximately 7 June 2002. After issuance of the COA, the green aircraft will be flown to Lockheed Martin's plant in Greenville, South Carolina where it will await modification. Design and engineering work for these modifications will begin later this year, and modification of the aircraft will be completed in August 2004. Following extensive ground and flight testing of the aircraft and issuance of the FAA STC, the aircraft will be delivered to UCAR/NCAR in October 2004. Approximately eight months will then be allocated for the installation of infrastructure (data acquisition system, intercom system [ICS], etc.) by NCAR staff. The first deployment of the GV is planned for June 2005.

To learn more about the specific modifications to be made to the aircraft to prepare it for research, please visit the What is HIAPER? section of the HIAPER Web site.

Current Activities

Here in the HIAPER Project Office, primary emphasis is now being placed on detailed planning and discussion of the modifications to be made to the GV. Many decisions must shortly be made regarding research power and wiring, aperture plate locations, wing hard point weight carrying capacities, and the installation of a research pitot-static system on the aircraft. These issues were discussed with members of the scientific community this past April during a joint HIAPER Advisory Committee (HAC) and Observing Facilities Advisory Panel (OFAP) HIAPER briefing here at NCAR. Many good suggestions were made by those attending this meeting, and it is this type of community input which is helping to guide a number of critical engineering decisions for the new aircraft.

The majority of the engineering and modification decisions need to be made by late August, when UCAR/NCAR and NSF HIAPER team members will participate in a Systems Requirements Conference with Gulfstream and Lockheed Martin personnel. Following this conference, Lockheed Martin will begin detailed engineering work for the aircraft.

To aid the HPO and other HIAPER team members in making modification and instrumentation decisions for the new aircraft and to help with the formulation of operational guidelines, several IPT (Integrated Project Team) subgroups have been established by the HPO. These subgroups will be chaired by UCAR/NCAR staff and external community members and will consist of members drawn from UCAR and NCAR, universities, and other government laboratories. More information regarding these subgroups, their chairs and members, and each subgroup's specific charges will shortly be available via the HIAPER Web site, so please take a look there in the coming days for more information.

Community Involvement with HIAPER and the Community Instrumentation Workshop

Many avenues have been created for the HPO and other UCAR/NCAR HIAPER team members to interact with the scientific community as this new environmental research platform becomes a reality. These avenues have been well exercised in the initial planning for the HIAPER and have included workshop, community surveys, and ongoing interactions with the HAC. The HIAPER Project Office is fully committed to and will be continuing this established pattern of open information flow with the community regarding this project, and I hope that you all will participate in this process as you feel appropriate.

An important upcoming opportunity for community involvement will be the long-awaited Community Instrumentation Workshop. NSF will lead and support this workshop, which is presently planned to occur during the week of 4 November 2002 here at NCAR. We expect to finalize the exact dates of the workshop and issue a preliminary announcement by mid-June, and complete program and registration information will follow after this first announcement. For those of you interested in attending, I hope you will mark your calendars now.

A small program committee has recently been established to oversee planning for this workshop, and the members of this group are as follows:

• Jim Huning - NSF HIAPER Program Official and Chair
• Krista Laursen - NCAR/HPO Director
• Dave Carlson - NCAR/ATD Director
• Dave Jorgensen - NOAA and HAC Chair
• Bill Brune - Penn State University
• Chuck Brock - NOAA

We (the members of the program committee) would be pleased to hear from you with any suggestions you may have about the workshop, and information about this exciting event will continue to be provided via these monthly status reports and the new HIAPER Web site.

In Conclusion

We are now in a very exciting phase of the HIAPER project, as we work collectively to bring longstanding plans for a research aircraft of the GV's capabilities on-line as a truly world class environmental research platform. We have reached this point in the project due to special and sustained efforts of many individuals, several of whom I would like to mention here: Jim Huning (HIAPER Program Official at NSF), who has worked vigorously and successfully with colleagues in ATM at the NSF to obtain funding and support for the project within NSF; Tim Killeen (NCAR Director), who has confirmed and wholeheartedly supported NCAR's multi-year commitment to acquiring and operating HIAPER; Dave Carlson (NCAR/ATD Director and HIAPER PI), who has committed enormous amounts of time to the planning and promotion of the HIAPER; the members of the HAC, who have all been stalwart supporters of the project and helpful community advisors; numerous UCAR and NCAR staff members who have already devoted so much time and energy to this project and continue to contribute their time and enthusiasm. We are grateful to everyone who has worked with us on this project to date, and we look forward to continuing to work with each of you as we continue to move forward with this important acquisition.

I wish to close this month's inaugural status report by communicating how excited and enthusiastic I am to have this opportunity to work with all of you and with the scientific community at large to bring the HIAPER into service as a new, cutting edge environmental research platform. I am a firm believer in open communications, so should any of you ever have any questions about the HIAPER project, please do not hesitate to contact me here in the HPO.