| News - Tornadoes | |||
| Written by Reed Timmer | |||
| Wednesday, 24 June 2009 11:58 | |||
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As mentioned in earlier blog entries, the TVN/Radiance Technologies team successfully launched the RC plane into the tornadic southern Nebraska atmosphere on June 17th. The video below shows the initial launch with a tornado in the background, and the RC plane deploying parachute probes into the inflow region of the storm. Note the aerial shots of the parachute probe getting deployed out the rear, and sucked toward the tornado before wrapping around the backside! Each of these probes measures temperature, pressure, and dewpoint inside the tornado; one of the probes can even record HD video! The probes were recovered that night from a corn field. Each of the probes has GPS tracking ability and we plot their path and location in 3-D on Google Earth in the Radiance vehicle. At the time of the video below, we were in the process of driving into theses same tornadoes (shown far away from the plane vehicle perspective) with the SRV Dominator, with the radar pointed in the vertical to measure the updraft winds while the roof-mounted anemometer measured winds in the horizontal. Be sure to watch Storm Chasers on Discovery this fall for the rest of the story!! (Click on the "READ MORE" button, below, for the video!)
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Re:Aerial footage from the June 17 Nebraska tornadofest!
Jun 26 2009 15:04:50 Oh wow, that is amazingly COOL! For some reason, it didn't occur to me that "RC" meant "radio controlled".
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Re:Aerial footage from the June 17 Nebraska tornadofest!
Jun 26 2009 15:22:40 WOW Reed, you keep it up and you might have 5 post by the end of the year...lol.
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Re:Aerial footage from the June 17 Nebraska tornadofest!
Jun 27 2009 23:24:30 |
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Comments
Brett
I am curious about the RC plane… is it being flown "blind" or can the operator see from the planes perspective via the on-board cameras? What keeps the RC plane from being sucked in to the tornado? Is the plane equipped with GPS in case it does get caught up? Kudos to the RC pilot! (Not sure if that's the right term, but it's never stopped me before!!!)
As always, THANK YOU for sharing your work with us arm-chair chasers! Be safe and God Bless Ya!
T-Baby
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