Last AMMA flight!

Yesterday was the last AMMA flight. And my last flight till 2008 at the earliest. We did a double flight with afternoon and then one in the early evening.


After a dodgy start, which involved Imodium and a couple of toilet breaks (nasty.. :), I managed to measure OH and HO₂ for the first flight. It was really interesting to see how life is tied to the river in the Sahel regions. Water really does control life out here...


And I thought everything was going well for the second till the laser died on take-off. I was gutted. An over-compliance error came up for the YAG. How can something be OVER-COMPLIANT!! Stupid thing. Well it has happened before so I wracked my brain to try and remember what Trev did the last time. I fiddled around with stuff and finally got the laser working again. The only problem was that the power was half what it was pre-take off and the timing was going insane!! So I made an excutive decision and turned the laser and pumps off till the cabin temp dropped 5oC to 30oC. I've come to the conclusion that the laser can't take temps over 30oC. After a ten minute break to let me and the laser cool down I tried again and what do you know. Success! I gave up on measuring OH tho as the power was so low and dumped the whole lot into the HO₂ cell. I could even see the HO₂ at night which was reassuring.

After 9 hours of standing around trying to measure HO₂ in +30oC heat I missed the after last flight party and collapsed into bed. It's not like me to miss a party but sometimes there's only so far you can push it... But at least I got to take a few photos of pretty clouds while waiting for the laser to cool.