NOAA Teacher at Sea
Jane Temoshok
Onboard NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown
October 2 – 24, 2001
Mission: Eastern Pacific Investigation of Climate Processes
Geographical Area: Eastern Pacific
Date: October 2, 2001
Just got back from a fabulous C-130 flight! It was a long day but well worth it. The video and digital pictures will be amazing. They let me fly the plane!!!!! for real!!!! Then I dropped several air expendable bathythermographs (EXBT) – in other words big plastic tubes out of a hole in the floor of the plane.
The chief scientist, Nick Bond, also gave me a job to do which required using the onboard computers to note the exact time and longitude of each drop. The plane “porpoised” for 6 hours to just south of the equator. Porpoising means we flew at an altitude of 5000 feet for 7 min. and then descended to 100 feet! for 7 minutes and then back up to 5000 ft. Of course Dr. Kermond filmed everything so there will be lots to see. Everybody on board was very accommodating.
Please share my historic flight with my students tomorrow. I’m sure they will be impressed. We did fly over the RON BROWN – just barely because we were only at 100 ft! Then on our way back I was able to speak with Jennifer via the cockpit radio. Very exciting.
Keep in touch,
Jane
