EMeRGe-Asia

At 09:02, only two minutes later than scheduled, HALO took off for the last time from Tainan airport. The flight today will go to U-Tapao, Thailand, not only as a pure ferry flight, but also as a scientific measurement flight. And we leave at the right time, because today was a really chilly and windy morning! The team watches HALO preparing for the last take-off from Tainan. Yesterday the group started packing the equipment and preparing the shipping, some of the team will continue and finish today, while I will be already on my way to Taipei and then to Frankfurt. All the equipment has to be shipped back.

In the last two days (April 03, April 04), we conducted two more measurement flights. Now there will be two days for rest, calibrations, and packing before the ferry flights back to Germany start. The first ferry flight (April 07) will go again to U-Tapao near Bangkok and will be another important scientific flight. On the second ferry (U-Tapao -> Abu Dhabi) the instruments will not be operating (no permission over India), but the third (Abu Dhabi -> Oberpfaffenhofen, April 09) will be a measurement flight again. HALO after the last landing here at Tainan (04.04.2018). Furthermore, we found out that two of the older guys around had not only been at the MINOS campaign in 2001, but also still had the old t-shirts! So we had to do the "MINOS revival picture": ...the good old days! And finally, there was a birthday celebration in the "beer garden" on front of the hotel: Birthday party in the "beer garden".

On Saturday we visited the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum. A large, new, but also beautiful area with a park, eight pagodes, museums and exhibitions, and with a very, very large golden Buddha statue. The suspiciously looking symbol is a "swastica", an ancient religious symbol in Asia. For more info, look it up on Wikipedia Later we went to a beach on Cijin Island, and it was my first time to swim in the sea on a Easter Saturday! The Sunset Bar

Sometimes it simply doesn't work as planned. Originally we planned to fly Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and then the three ferry flights back to Germany on Sat, Sun, Mon. But it turned out that this tight schedule doesn't work with the duty times of the pilots. So we re-scheduled to fly only Monday and Wednesday, in oder to have two ground days befor the ferry flights. But yesterday evening we learned that the Philippinian authorities don't accept our flight plan for Monday, although we submitted in time. Thus, we took a backup flight plan for Tuesday, shortened it to 6 hours and submitted that. Hopefully this one gets accepted for Tuesday, because for Monday (tomorrow) time is too short. And flying on Tuesday and Wednesday means that one of the flights has to be short (max 6 hours) to keep with the duty time requirements for the pilots. But, besides of that: Happy Easter!

At least up to now this was the longest measurement flight, 9 hours and 23 minutes. It lead us to the coast of Japan where we measured pollution from Japan and older emissions from the Yangtse region. On the way to Japan we flew at high altitude where we encountered an air mass mixed down from the stratosphere, with high ozone values. At the end we flew low over Taipeh and the west coast of Taiwan . Taipeh Power plant on west coast of Taiwan The happy mission PI after the flight.

We had a day off yesterday and went by car to the mountains, to the Alishan National Park. It was very nice so see some nature, as a contrast to the daily routine of hotel, airport, hotel, airport... On our way (more than 2 hours drive) we visited some temples and the "Fire and Water Spring", where natural gas exits from a water spring, and its said the gas burns since 300 years. A beautiful temple. The fire and water spring. Cherry blossom. One of the "giant trees", this one is 2000 year old. The view on the clouds from the mountains (2100 m) is spectacular! Today (28.03.2018) we had another measurement flight, again towards the Philippines.