July 16, 2002

Krista Laursen
Director, HIAPER Project Office

As I reported last month, early June saw the completion of the NSF and UCAR/NCAR "green" aircraft at Gulfstream's facility in Savannah, Georgia. From 25-26 June, a group of us from UCAR, NCAR, and NSF participated in the third and final IPT (integrated project team) meeting at Gulfstream and had the much anticipated opportunity to see and walk through our new GV. Needless to say, it was very exciting to get to look over "our" aircraft and (for a number of us) to have the chance to sit in the cockpit of what will, in a little over two years time, become the latest addition to the NSF/NCAR research aircraft fleet. A number of Gulfstream project management and maintenance personnel were on hand during our tour of S/N 677 (the NSF/UCAR/NCAR GV) to answer our questions and to explain a bit more about the detailed capabilities of the aircraft and to discuss with us further possibilities for instrumentation mount locations. Dick Friesen of the HIAPER Project Office (HPO), Dave Jorgensen (NOAA and HAC Chair), and a Gulfstream staff member took a number of picture of the completed green aircraft and the various IPT 3 meeting participants, and a number of these pictures will shortly be posted to the HIAPER website in the Photo Gallery. So, as always, I invite each of you to visit the HIAPER site and take a look at these new photos.

The NSF/NCAR GV will shortly be transferred to Lockheed Martin's facility in Greenville, South Carolina where it will be put into storage. Lockheed Martin's modification plant will serve as HIAPER's temporary home throughout the modification phase of the project (scheduled to extend until August 2004).

Now, I would like to update you on the status of recent and ongoing activities here in the Project Office.

Current Activities

As mentioned above, IPT 3 was held at Gulfstream from 25-26 June and provided the UCAR, NCAR, NSF, and other staff attending to engage in detailed discussions with Gulfstream and Lockheed Martin personnel on a number of critical engineering and technical issues. Owing to the active participation of Dick Friesen (HPO), Mike Spowart (ATD/RAF), Jack Fox (ATD/DFS), Dave Carlson (ATD), Jeff Stith (ATD/RAF), and a host of other UCAR/NCAR and Gulfstream and Lockheed personnel, we were able to make substantial progress in terms of fully outlining what modification decisions remain to be made, when they must be made, and who is responsible for each associated action item. As of this writing, we are very close to finalizing our plans for research power and wiring on the aircraft, and it is the opinion of HPO staff that after the receipt and analysis of some additional airflow data from Gulfstream, we will be able to finalize our decisions regarding the locations of aperture plates and other modifications to the aircraft. Of course, as the HPO and other UCAR/NCAR staff work to finalize these modification decisions, we will continue to solicit input and comments from the user community to the greatest extent possible in order to try and ensure that decisions are made that will meet the desired research needs of the majority of the community.

The next major step in the engineering design and modification phase of the HIAPER project is the Systems Design Review (SDR; also sometimes referred to as the Systems Requirements Conference). This important meeting has tentatively been scheduled for the week of 23 September 2002, and it will be held in Greenville, South Carolina at Lockheed Martin's facility. During this conference, Gulfstream, Lockheed, UCAR/NCAR, and NSF personnel will review the final modification requirements (aperture locations, etc.) as proposed by UCAR/NCAR and Lockheed personnel will -- whenever possible -- present early conceptual plans for these modifications.

Leading up to the SDR, HPO and UCAR/NCAR staff will work with Gulfstream to craft a statement of work (SOW) which will eventually become the formal document from Gulfstream to Lockheed detailing the specific modifications to be made to the NSF/NCAR GV. HPO staff have already started to review and modify a draft version of this SOW, and over the course of several iterations back and forth between the HPO and Gulfstream, the final version of this critical document will be created. As part of this iterative process -- and to make sure that we (UCAR/NCAR, Gulfstream, and Lockheed) stay on track on terms of finalizing the engineering decisions to be made -- we have all agreed to have weekly telecons between HPO, UCAR/NCAR, and Gulfstream staff.

Here at UCAR/NCAR, we are now in a very critical phase of the HIAPER project as we work to analyze data we've been given by Gulfstream and zero in on our final modification decisions. There is a significant amount of work to be done by the SDR this coming September. However, I am confident that with the communications process we've established with Gulfstream and by virtue of the high involvement and expertise of the various individuals participating in this process, we will reach decisions that will satisfy the research requirements of the majority of the airborne research community.

Update on the NSF-Led Community Instrumentation Workshop

As reported last month, planning is moving ahead at a vigorous pace for the 4-6 November 2002 HIAPER Instrumentation Workshop to be held here at NCAR. The Workshop Program Committee has, to date, held three teleconferences in order to build up the program for this event, and a good working version of this agenda has now been created. Several invited speakers have signed on to participate and to give overview talks on the opening day, and the second day of the workshop has been structured to give participants an opportunity to participate in "town hall" (open) discussions of instrumentation development ideas for HIAPER and in a number of focus group, parallel sessions designed to foster in-depth discussions of major research areas instrumentation priorities, instrumentation design and development ideas (new techniques and technologies, etc.), and HIAPER engineering aspects (wing pod and equipment rack designs, HIAPER engineering limitations and operational considerations, etc.).

The two-and-a-half days set aside for this workshop will be quite full, and a number of different topics related to HIAPER instrumentation development will be touched upon and discussed. However, all of us here in the Project Office and the members of the Program Committee feel strongly that this workshop will provide an exciting opportunity for members of the scientific community to learn more not only about the capability of the new GV but to hear and exchange ideas regarding the types of environmental measurements that are presently of the highest priority and the ways in which HIAPER can be instrumented in order to meet these critical measurement needs.

Invited speakers for the workshop are being asked to prepare brief (four to six pages) papers describing their presentations. These "white papers" will be made available to workshop participants in advance of the workshop, and these overview papers will also be combined with summaries of the various workshop sessions to form a workshop summary article to be submitted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).

Within the next few weeks, the official workshop announcement -- including program, registration, and local logistics (travel, accommodations, etc.) information -- will be released. This announcement will be posted to the HIAPER Web site and will also be posted via advertisements in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) weekly publication Eos and BAMS. An additional announcement will also be sent out to UCAR/NCAR staff. So, please stay tuned for this announcement and mark your calendars to attend this important HIAPER workshop.

In Conclusion

I would like to end this month's status report by welcoming on board four new members of the HIAPER Advisory Committee (HAC). Al Cooper (NCAR/ASP Director), Carl Friehe (Univ. of California, Irvine), Lynn Russell (Princeton Univ.), and Gabor Vali (Univ. of Wyoming) all recently accepted invitations to join this advisory group, and on behalf of the Project Office and other HIAPER team members here at UCAR/NCAR and NSF, I want to warmly welcome them and thank them for their willingness to work with us on this project. The research aircraft and instrumentation expertise and enthusiasm for the HIAPER project that they each bring with them will make them outstanding additions to the HAC, and Project Office staff look forward to working with Al, Carl, Lynn, Gabor, and the other HAC members as we continue our joint efforts on this project in the coming months.

As always, should you have any questions about the HIAPER program, please do not hesitate to contact me here in the HPO.