Although conditions over the next few days are not likely to produce a high ozone/haze episode, the aircraft will deploy to Philadelphia, PA as part of the the NARSTO Northeast Corridor Oxidant and Particle Study NE-OPS particle-oxidant project later today, July 9 and tomorrow, July 10 before much milder weather conditions move into the mid-Atlantic as forecast for later in the week.

Our current flight plan for Monday July 9 PM is to take off from College Park (CGS) early-/mid- afternoon and fly spirals at the following locations on the ferry to PA:
Fort Meade, MD (FME) from sfc-7.5 Kft MSL
Philadelphia Northeast, PA (PNE) ~10 miles NE of Philadelphia, PA from 7.5-sfc Kft
and perform a Millersville University (MU) balloon flyby at ~1.0 Kft (PNE pattern altitude) if we see it up before landing at PNE.
We will be operating two pilot crews, so once at PNE the intention is to fly a number of spirals over PNE throughout the night in order to evaluate the Penn State University lidar data and characterize any low-level jet formation in conjunction with the City of Philadelphia profiler/RASS and Millersville University (MU) tethered balloon at the NE-OPS surface site at the Baxter Water Treatment Facility.

On Tuesday July 10 we plan to fly our usual set of AM and PM NE-OPS plans (see the 1999 RAMMPP research flight summary for details on these plans and airport spiral locations) as described below.
For the AM Plan "Upwind" of Philadelphia, PA we plan to take off from PNE and perform an intercomparison flyby of the MU tethered balloon at ~1.0 Kft, followed by vertical survey spirals at the following locations:
9.5-sfc Kft over Summit, DE (EVY) ~40 miles SW of Philadelphia, PA
sfc-9.5 Kft over Pennridge, PA (N70) ~30 miles NNW of Philadelphia, PA
9.5-sfc Kft over Philadelphia Northeast Airport (PNE)
After a short break for refueling the PM Plan "Downwind" of Philadelphia, PA is planned as follows:
Take off from PNE and perform a MU balloon flyby, followed by vertical survey spirals at the following locations:
sfc-7.5 Kft over Trenton-Robbinsville, NJ (N87) ~35 miles NE of Philadelphia, PA
7.5-sfc Kft over Camden Co., NJ (19N) ~20 mi SE of Philadelphia, PA
sfc-7.5-sfc (two spirals) over PNE.
After refueling at PNE, we will ferry back to MD, performing spirals en route at:
PNE sfc-7.5 Kft
FME 7.5-sfc KfT
and landing at home base CGS Tuesday evening. If the weather turns convective during Tuesday afternoon we may leave the Philadelphia area early and combine elements from each of the Tuesday plans into a single flight.

While in Philadelphia we plan to base flight operations at the Philadelphia Jet Center 215-673-9000 (ask for "N500Z Crew") at PNE and stay at the nearby Philadelphia Northeast Doubletree Hotel 215-671-9600.

Preliminary results from both flight days will be posted at this site later this week.

Doddridge