NASA birds at MChord!

[p51]

There was a NASA ER-2 and a DC-8 both staged at McChord Field since yesterday with filed flight plans on yesterday: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NASA809 and http://flightaware.com/live/flight/NASA ... /KTCM/KTCM For the ground track of those flight plans (The ER-2 had a race-track outline going into the Pacific and back at 65,000 feet), I assume they must be flying visual support for a polar orbit satellite launch out of Vandenberg as that’s the only thing that makes sense for it to be this far North. I’ve never even heard of them bringing anything like that this far North before. Would be so cool to catch the TR-2 heading out (as I work not too far from there), but I doubt I’ll be that lucky.

[Zac Yates]

That I would like to see! Fingers crossed you can catch a glimpse.

[p51]

Just found out they're in the area for weather research...
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-heads-to-pacific-northwest-for-field-campaign-to-measure-rain-and-snowfall
Makes me wonder why they don’t use one of the WB-57s for that...

[Cubs2jets]

Makes me wonder why they don’t use one of the WB-57s for that...

Uhhhhh... because they were busy doing a 3-ship fly-by in Teaxs???

C2j

[p51]

Makes me wonder why they don’t use one of the WB-57s for that...

Uhhhhh... because they were busy doing a 3-ship fly-by in Teaxs???

C2j

Okay, chicken-or-egg time, then I wonder why they were doing that photo formation instead of using one of them for this duty...

[CAPFlyer]

The reason is the ER-2, which was specifically remanufactured by Lockheed for high altitude weather research (whereas the WB-57s are "general purpose scientific platforms"), has a 12 hour endurance while the WB-57 can only stay up for 6.5. Because of this, the ER-2 and DC-8 are paired together when doing long-duration weather research flights since they have compatible endurance meaning they only need those two aircraft instead of 1 DC-8 and 2 WB-57s.

Edit: Also, looking at the OLYMPEX website - http://olympex.atmos.washington.edu/ , the ER-2 is actually a "partner program" that is flying a different mission that is in support of OLYMPEX's flight operations -

RADEX
An important partner within NASA is the RADEX (Radar Definition Experiment), which will make radar and passive microwave measurements with the ER-2 aircraft in coordination with the OLYMPEX DC-8 and Citation aircraft (see Section7below). The goal of RADEX is to obtain information that will advance the development of radars to monitor clouds from space, including where cloud processes are active in thin clouds and a wide range of ambient temperatures. These goals lead to the desire for the same type of measurements that are sought in OLYMPEX, so OLYMPEX and RADEX will work very well in a joint experiment.