TELECON AGENDA SUMMARY: 29 October 2007

E. Atlas, presiding

Attendants:

UMiami: E. Atlas

NCAR: L. Pan, A. Weinheimer, I. Pollack, B. Hall, B. Stephens, P. Romashkin

TAMU: K. Bowman

JPL: MJ Mahoney

NOAA: D. Hurst

1. Report on Action Items from Telecon 2

   1. Update on Workshop plans (Pan)

      1. Laura reported good progress in workshop planning. A draft version of the agenda was sent to the START team, and comments and/or requests for presentations were solicited. The draft agenda was accepted, and it will be sent to all speakers to confirm participation. Soon after, a final agenda will be prepared. Laura also requested that all START team members register for the meeting. Two full days of meetings and presentations are planned (January 8-9, 2008).

   2. Update on forecast activities/plans/schedule (Bowman/Zhang)

      1. Ken discussed the outcome of the recent telecon among the forecasting group. The outcome was summarized in an e-mail (copied below).

Forecasting operations:

• The forecasting and mission operations center will be at JeffCo.

• A secondary site will be available at Foothills and connected by the Access Grid

• EOL is working on providing an AWIPS workstation at JeffCo for forecasting use

Tentative forecasting & operations schedule

Day preceding possible flight operations

14:00 - forecast discussion and flight planning meeting

15:00 - tentative go/no-go decision

Standard flight operation day

06:00 - final forecast meeting and flight planning session.

Final go/no-go decision.

08:00: nominal take-off time

16:00 - 17:00: landing

18:00 - debriefing

Convective flight operation day

10:00 - final forecast meeting and flight planning session.

Final go/no-go decision.

12:00: nominal take-off time

19:00 - 20:00: landing

21:00 - debriefing

3. Request for input on field catalog contents (Bowman)

   1. Ken also discussed progress on contents of a field catalog. A list of field catalog contents was sent to the START team for comments (see below). This list will be used to develop a request to NSF for EOL support of a mission field catalog.

Send specific requests ASAP to Ken Bowman (k-bowman@tamu.edu) for products to be included in the FC.

The potential list of field contents is given below.

Data sources

Operational products

NCEP

GFS (1 deg x 1 deg)

GFS (0.5 deg x 0.5 deg) - Hall and Bowman will investigate availability

NAM

NEXRAD mosaics

GOES imagery

Experimental products

WRF (NCAR - Weisman)

once daily (00Z) 36-hour forecast with 3 km horizontal resolution

available by 06:00 - 08:00 each day

most useful for final flight planning for convective flights

evaluating possibility of larger domain and increased vertical resolution

WRF or MM5 (TAMU - Zhang)

once daily (12Z) 48-hour forecast

lower resolution but larger domain important for planning gravity-wave flights

2. New Items

   1. Summary of payload status (Pavel)

      1. There has been no major change to the payload configuration from the last discussion. The NCAR CO instrument is now being incorporated into the FastO3 rack. Likely instruments for the remaining rack are the MEDUSA plus the NOAA O3 instruments. Engineering calculations are still required though to determine if these instruments are compatible.

      2. MJ Mahoney reported that parts for the MTP instrument are scheduled to be finished in time for HEFT test flights.

2. Request for instrument descriptions for website (Atlas)

   1. Elliot requested that all START instrument investigators send a brief description of their instruments (technique, precision, accuracy, sample rate, etc.) and appropriate links (if available) to instrument or description websites. This request will be followed by an e-mail request to those not participating in the telecon.