My ride in the NOAA P3 Hurricane Hunter

If you ask me what the main piece of the DYNAMO project is, I would say the 4 main ISS sites, including Diego Garcia, Male and two ships, the Revelle and the Mirai. There are some other land sites that are contributing data as well as the usual satellites. There is also a couple planes that have been flying in the vicinity of the DYNAMO array to help collect data over the open ocean. The one that has been working out of Diego Garcia is a P3 owned by NOAA that is usually based in Tampa to investigate hurricanes in the Atlantic.

The team of crew and scientists extended us an invitation to ride on the plane several times, but there were a couple reasons why this didn't sound very appealing to us. Most of all, the flights are looooong. I'm talking about 9 hours in a tube. Don't get me wrong, the first 4 hours would be great and most of the time you would able to walk around and do as you please. However, after the initial fascination wears off I'm not sure I want to be stuck in a plane that long with nothing to do. We also had balloons to launch. Our supervisor, Steve Cohn, didn't think the long hours of the flight was anything to worry about so he decided to go. He enjoyed it a lot, but he was able to sleep through half of it. So then last week we got word that there were two seats open for the last P3 flight of DYNAMO. The purpose was to calibrate a few instruments and would only be 4 hours long, so Steph and I decide to take advantage of the opportunity.  

This had to be one of the coolest things I've ever done. At first we thought that Steph and I would have to trade off sitting in the cockpit, but it turns out they have this little bench in the cockpit that can double as a seat, and since there was very little turbulence that day they let me sit there. Here's a picture of the seat:

Not the safest spot, but probably one of the best views.

For the first part of the flight we criss-crossed over the island to calibrate the altimeter. We were flying very low over the island so it was a great opportunity to take pictures, like this one

Most every picture has a rainbow in it like this one. Afterwards we spent a lot of time flying around 200m over the ocean surface. We had to wear life jackets at all times, because at that altitude there’s no time to correct the plane if it starts to drop. There were even a few times where they dropped down to 100m!!! I got plenty of cool cloud pictures. Here's a good one where you can see the rain shaft,

Another part of the calibration process involved doing “pitch” and “yaw” oscillations. This involved just making the plane go up and down over and over again, reversin direction every 5-10 seconds. It was a recipe for motion sickness (Steph lost her lunch). It felt just like a roller coaster. 

We also got to help drop these oceanographic instruments through a tube that launched them out the bottom of the plane. Here's a video of the P3 crew dropping two kinds of these. The first one is very cheap but the second cost around $1500 each, and they only work 2 out of 3 times!!!

This was all great, but the coolest part was when they let each of us take control of the plane! 

I should say that it was for no more than 2 minutes, but it was still awesome. I expected the plane to respond quickly but there was a big lag between when you moved the controls and when you felt the plane move. The controls were also super sensitive. The only thing we did was make the pane go up and down and then just try to keep it level, but even that small task was much harder than I anticipated. This is a very old plane that requires 3 people in the cockpit to operate it, and some of these guys have been flying this plane, or other planes just like it, for over 10 years so I have a lot of appreciation for them and the fact that they routinely fly this through hurricanes!

I'm actually writing this from our hotel in Singapore. We had a really great day here and I need to write about it plus I have some other things that happened back in Diego Garcia that I'd like to make a blog post about. Things are happening too fast for me to document them! Luckily I've been diligent about taking photos everywhere I go, so stay tuned!