SUMMARY of February 17, 2001 Citation Flight
Jim Dye
April 12, 2004

The comments on clouds in the following summary are based in large
part from my flight notes made during and after the flight. 

After takeoff from the SLF, the Citation first flew north to try to
find pre-frontal clouds.
>From very roughly 1635 to 1650 the aircraft flew about 100 to 150 km
NW to NNW of WSR74C. A low cloud layer estimated at 4500 to 5000 ft
altitude and a few larger Cu were observed from the aircraft but
we were unable to get clearance to fly in the clouds. The aircraft
sounding from PAFB shows the 0C level to be ~4.2 to 4.3 km, so this
layer was entirely at temperatures above the freezing level. The
MER plot for 1630 to 1640 does show some isolated Cu extending to
~5 km top.

Somewhat thicker clouds were found in the vicinity of Daytona Beach
from ~1650 to 1700 with bases near 8000 ft and tops near 9000 ft
but we were unable to get clearance to work. The MER plot
at 1651 does show one Cu extending to 7 km.

Neither the radar nor the aircraft observer notes show any evidence
of clouds sufficiently deep to be considered Thick Clouds for the
Thick Cloud rule. Some Cu did extend above the freezing zone.

E fields for this entire flight were <100 V/m.

>From ~1710 to ~1740 the A/C made low level passes over the SLF
field mill for E field calbration purposes and touched down near
this mill as we landed at the SLF at 1753. There were deeper clouds
over/near the SLF (see MER plot at 1730 - 1740) and we tried to get
clearance to do a spiral ascent to 10,000 ft, but without success.
Even below these clouds Emag was ~200 V/m.


Flight notes state that there was a lot of smoke and haze from
wild fires at the time of takeoff, and while it was still present
there was not as much smoke at landing.


NOTE:  Microphysical measurements for this day were not processed
because of a 5 hour time set error with the UND data system. The
correction was made for the flight data, but not microphysics.