----------------------------- 7/01/99 -------------------------------- Dear Kwajex Colleagues, A brief update on ongoing Kwajex activities: The NOAA Profiler group, Paul Johnston and Christopher Williams, have installed the Profiler system on Legan in the last few days. They are in the process of getting final approval for start of routine operation. The team for setting up the VIZ radiosonde systems on the outer islands of Lae (Lae Atoll) and Woja (Ailinglaplap Atoll) are enroute to Kwajalein. Don Penney, Brian Cunningham and Ron Collins, all from Wallops, are on the setup team. They will be joined by a student from Univ. of Hawaii, Hilo, Viscounte Christman, whose father works at Kwaj. The team will depart Kwajalein next Tuesday, 6 July (local time - 5 July here in the U.S.). They will go out on the Great Bridge, the KMR Landing Craft, which will carry and land the heavy equipment required to move the shelter and support equipment onto the island. The Kwajex team will be joined by a work party from KMR to set up the shelter, power generators, scientific and communications equipment. They will also do some airstrip maintenance as required to allow the KMR aircraft to land on the islands in case of emergency. The setup team will sail to Woja first, allowing roughly a week for setup there, and then out to Lae. If all goes according to schedule the setup for both islands will be completed just before start of the first IOP on 23 July. Don Penney and Brian Cunningham will conduct the balloon launches on Lae for the first IOP and Ron Collins and Robert Pasken will cover Woja. (Depending on when we can get Pasken to Woja, Christman may help with the balloon launches until he arrives, which should be no later than the 28th of July). Preparations on KMR are complete or nearing completion. Elliot Moseley, the KMR Mission Director for TRMM/Kwajex, and the staff at KMR have been working extremely hard over the last many months to assure that our requirements are met. We should be in good shape as people begin arriving over the next few weeks. Quincy Allison has been working with many of you to get air shipments scheduled on the AMC flights. Be advised that the time between equipment arrival at Travis and arrival at Kwajalein is running approximately 10 days to two weeks so you must plan accordingly. I also want to remind everyone that, as we heard at the Seattle meeting, lodging on Kwajalein is quite limited. The situation will be exacerbated at times because we will be competing with other ongoing missions for lodging space. The rooms run the gamut from a single bed with a private bath to 7 person rooms with a shared bath. KMR will provide us as many rooms (and beds) as they have available. There will be some private rooms available to us, but in general, most people will NOT have private rooms. Regards, Steve ************************************* Steve Hipskind Chief, Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Branch NASA Ames Research Center shipskind@mail.arc.nasa.gov ph 650/604-5076 fx 650/604-3625