Certification Flight Polar 6 - April 26th

Short after the arrival of Polar 6 also the PMS probes arrived in Inuvik. Only one week from Oberpfaffenhofen to Northern Canada. That was quick regarding the two official Easter holidays in Canada. The boxes were soon unpacked and in  record-breaking time, the equipment was installed on Polar 5. First ground test have been made already on Friday. For all our surprise, all probes basically worked after the long journey, except some non-critical Ethernet problems. With all system running we could perform two short test flights which were required for the final certification of the Polar 6 science configuration. The first flight last about one hour with an ascent up to 10.000 ft. The second flight was much shorter. With 15 min between takeoff and landing it was just a quick circle around the airport. Between the two flights we exchanged one additional probe and rotated also the science crew to let everyone test its own instrument. During the first flight even some clouds with ice crystals could be observed by the PMS probes what we did not expect from the weather forecast but was a fortunate coincidence. So the HaloHolo probe recorded its first holograms of ice crystals.