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8.0RESULTS OF ANALYSES <br />This section addresses the results of the three most productive hygroscopic test cases (May 14, 25, and <br />31, 2005 that were obtained in SPECTRA II. Although the details on these and all flights are provided in <br />Appendices C, D and E, some of the most relevant information is brought forward here in order to facilitate the <br />presentation <br />8.1Results of May 14, 2005 <br />Operational Overview <br />(All times are GMT) <br />This was research flight #7 on May 14, 2005 from 21:10 – 23:40; 2 hr 30 min. <br />The mission objectives were to practice salt powder seeding and SF gas release. <br />6 <br />Pilots: David Prentice/Jack Cobb/Nolan Sackett <br />Instruments operator: Duncan Axisa <br />Flight scientists: Daniel Rosenfeld/Bill Woodley <br />Field Meteorologist: Joe Merchant/Michael (Red) Francik <br />Instrument conditions: <br />Preflight: <br />The crew discussed extensively the methodology of salt seeding, procedures to maintain separation during flight <br />and several operational instructions procedures were put in place. <br />Flight: <br />The plan was to fly three aircraft to obtain a salt-seeding case. The research aircraft (seed 1) was to direct the <br />seeder aircraft to an area of convection that was suitable for hygroscopic seeding. Another aircraft (seed 2) <br />occupied by Woodley was flown to place the seeder pilot (seed 3) in the cloud updraft. The aircraft departed the <br />Plains (F98) airport in succession starting at 21:10. At 21:31 seed 1 climbed to 8400 feet to start measurements <br />of the droplet size distribution (DSD). The DSD measurements were conducted from 8400 feet close to near <br />cloud top at 15600 feet. Three seeded clouds were sampled. <br /> The flight tracks for the seeding and study of clouds 2 and 3 on this day are shown in Figures 4 and 5, <br />respectively. The tracks of the seeder (seed 3) and the monitoring cloud physics aircraft (seed 1) for cloud 2 are <br />shown in Figure 4. The inset plot of cloud liquid water and voltage of the SFdetector do not indicate that the <br />6 <br />seeding plume had been intercepted. The small “bumps” in the SF plot are due to updrafts within the cloud and <br />6 <br />not to the sensing of the SF gas. <br />6 <br /> The plots for two portions of cloud 3 are more informative (Figure 5). The inset plots for the <br />southeastern portion of cloud 3 are not shown because they are not of much interest. The inset plot that is shown <br />30 <br />