Alan Nelson's Daily Commentary for 7 September 1999

Kwajalein Island, Republic of Marshall Islands

I now have all the available Kwajalein radiosonde flight data from the last month reprocessed so that there really is temperature data rather than range data in the temperature column! There are still 20 files that I have to get from the data archive. Everything else I found in a more accessible backup system that I could work on and not really bother anyone else. Tomorrow I will work at getting those 20 and get started on doing the same thing for the radiosonde data from Roi. It is a lot of hand processing. A nuisance, but there isn't any other way to get the job done and we can only use the software while we are here at Kwajalein, so....that's what I'll be doing!

Apparently "the mission" went well last night. On August 20, we all got to watch the missile from Vandenberg fall into the lagoon. The one last night (actually very early this morning) was advertised as being not very spectacular and so most of us didn't bother trying to see it.

Of course, the 767 was looking at it! Here it is taxiing back to its parking place. This angle shows the fins on the lower side of the fuselage, under the tail that were the only modification needed when the 84-foot instrument pod was installed on the top of the plane. That pod houses a 5,000 pound instrument but they didn't need to make any structural changes to the 767 to accommodate it. I didn't expect a plane fuselage to be that strong, but it comforting to know that it is!

Here is a picture of yet one more way to measure rain drop sizes. You are looking at a piece of blotter paper that has been treated with a dye called Methylene Blue. The blotter paper is kept in a Tupperware dish with a lid on it. There are several of these dishes always at the ready in the Ops center. When it rains, someone has to go out in the rain, hold the pan level and take the cover off--in the rain. A compatriot can stay inside, out of the rain, and time how long the cover is off. When the person in the rain decides there are enough drops to count but not to many to be confusing, they put the cover back on the dry member of the team stops timing. Then the drops on the paper are counted and measured. It is a very old method of determining drop sizes, but it works. Data collection doesn't HAVE to be highly technical!

Alan Nelson