An Update on Unmanned Aircraft Campaigns at Oliktok Point
Authors
Mark D. Ivey — Sandia National Laboratories
Beat Schmid — Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
James Maslanik — University of Colorado
Gijs de Boer — University of Colorado
Darin Desilets — Sandia National Laboratories
Geoffrey L Bland — NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center - Wallops Flight Facility
Jack Elston — University of Colorado, Boulder
Dale Lawrence — University of Colorado
Brian Argrow — University of Colorado
Scott E. Palo — University of Colorado
Category
ARM Infrastructure
Description
The DataHawk team prepares for launch during the COALA campaign at Oliktok Point.
The ARM Mobile Facility deployment to Oliktok Point provides a unique opportunity to pair state-of-the-art, surface-based instrumentation with in situ sampling from unmanned aerial vehicles. The University of Colorado (CU) is actively participating in these efforts, operating small, unmanned aircraft for two campaigns in 2014 and 2015.
The first of these campaigns, titled Coordinated Observations of the Arctic Lower Atmosphere (COALA), occurred in October 2014 and included flights by the CU DataHawk aircraft. The DataHawk is a very small (1-meter wingspan), lightweight (~700 g total weight) and low-cost (~$2000, including labor, parts and overhead) platform that makes measurements of temperature, humidity, and pressure, while also providing an estimate of the local wind speed and direction. During COALA, the DataHawk flew 30 flights over a 12-day period, despite unfavorable weather conditions.
The second campaign is the ERASMUS (Evaluation of Routine Atmospheric Sounding Measurements using Unmanned Systems) campaign, to be held at Oliktok Point in April of 2015. For this campaign, the CU team will operate two different aircraft, including the DataHawk discussed above, and a larger Pilatus UAS. The Pilatus will carry an optical particle spectrometer for measurement of aerosol particles between 150-2500 nm, as well as broadband short- and long-wave radiation instrumentation.
In this poster, we will provide an update on these campaigns, including preliminary evaluation of measurements from COALA and progress on aircraft preparation and testing for ERASMUS.
