How to do the HALO ground support

How to do the HALO ground support#

The main tasks of the ground support are:

  1. Be available for any requests and issues from the flight crew and provide them the information they need

  2. Get in touch with relevant people on the ground to sort out the upcoming problems you cannot solve yourself

  3. Propose adjustments to the flight plan in case of waiting times or ATC issues, based on the available satellite data and forecasts

  4. Provide and upload useful information, like the flight .kml file and satellite images

  5. Inform on interesting weather phenomena in the flight area

  6. Make sure that everyone will be picked up from the airport

  7. Contribute to a positive spirit and excitement on the flight

Usually one person is responsible for the ground support and approached by the PI a few days ahead of the flight. During the flight, it’s good to have an additional person helping you out and allowing you for some breaks.

Before the flight:#

  • The ground support communicates with the crew on HALO via PLANET. Make sure you have access to PLANET (approach the DLR Project Management, e.g. Thomas Sprünken) and get familiar with it beforehand.

  • Approach the different instrument teams (WALES, Dropsondes, HAMP, Smart/VELOX, SpecMACS) and figure out who is available for support in case of issues with the individual instruments. Ask them to be available at the beginning of the flight in case of starting issues.

  • Upload the flightplan .kml file to PLANET. You can download the .kml file at the bottom of the flight plan page of your respective flight. To upload the file on PLANET, go to the 2nd symbol of the left called GEOMARKER, then click on ‘Upload’ and select the .kml file to upload.

  • About 15 min before take off, show that you’re online and welcome people to the flight

  • Upload a first satellite image. For this, you first go to NASA worldview (selects GOES East/ABI Clean Infrared. Another option is to send a GeoColor image), then go to the snapshot tool (camera symbol in the upper right corner), chose a region that fits the area of flight operations in the ‘Edit Coordinates’ section (e.g., -60 to -40 E, 5 to 20 N), and download a JPEG image at 5km or 10km resolution (you can only upload small files to PLANET). To upload the image to PLANET, go to ‘File Transfer’ at the top of the page, click on ‘Send File’, choose the file and select to send to HALO. The upload takes a while. In the mean time, inform the PI and others of the upload by posting a message in the ‘General’ chat that you’re uploading a satellite image and specify the lat/lon boundaries of the image. On the aircraft, the PI can then add the satellite image to PLANET as a ‘custom layer’. For the people following HALO from the ground, you can also add the image by clicking on the 5th symbol on the left called CUSTOM LAYERS, click on ‘ADD’, select the file with the satellite image, select the lon/lats and add it.

During the flight:#

Now it is the time to fulfill tasks 1-7 outlined above.

Satellite images should be uploaded every 30-60 min (or upon request from the crew), by following the procedure outlined above. Sometimes it is also nice to upload a windy forecast or satellite image. For this, go to windy.com, upload the .kml file with the flight plan via the ‘Menu’ and then ‘Display KML, GPX, …’ in the upper right corner. Then make a screenshot of any forecast (e.g. the winds to see the doldrums) or the satellite images, and upload it on PLANET via ‘File Transfer’ as described above. Again, notify the crew of the upload through a chat message.

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