Feb 24:  The P3-B flew from Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) to Dryden to team up with the DC-8 and from there to start the transit flights to Hong Kong.  The P3-B was two days late leaving WFF due to a fuel leaks.  The P-3B was diverted from Edwards AFB (Dryden) to Palmdale, due to runway repairs.  Palmdale is an air force “skunk works” facility that as it turns out is closer to the hotel in Lancaster. The C130 transited to Dryden the day before on Feb 23^rd , loaded  DC-8 spare parts and other gear and proceeded the next morning to Palmdale before the runway closed.

Flight 4 Summary - WFF to Palmdale transit (note: Flights 1,2,and3 were test flights conducted at WFF during integration):

While there were no focused objectives for this transit, several notable observations were made:

Extremely low NOy values (tens of pptv) were encountered early in the flight

The middle of the flight was dominated by the presence of severe thunderstorms forcing the aircraft to divert to the south.  Lightning activity was strong based on stormscope detections too numerous to count.  Unfortunately, the aircraft was forced to pass upwind of the storms.  Only one occasion occurred where a handful of lightning strikes occurred upwind of the aircraft.  Shortly thereafter, NO values in excess of 500 pptv were encountered.

As expected from ECMWF predictions, an intrusion of stratospheric air was encountered over the southwest US with ozone values above 200 ppbv between 20-25Kft.  Clear-air turbulence was also encountered within stratospheric air (110-120 ppbv ozone) which may have contributed to enhanced mixing of stratospheric and tropospheric air.