Airborne research

The ARA workhorses, two of only six in the world built by Diamond as environmental sensing platforms, carry out a wide range of airborne operations for universities, research institutions and other clients, including the CSIRO.

The unit came to national prominence in June when Chile’s Puyehue volcano erupted and its dangerous ash cloud drifted into Australian and New Zealand airspace, grounding flights and severely disrupting travel plans.

Qantas’s safety division contacted ARA at its Parafield Airport base, in Adelaide’s northern suburbs, to see whether the research unit could assist in monitoring the ash cloud and help to determine when jet aircraft could return to the skies safely over Tasmania, Victoria and South Australia.

With none of the specialised dust measuring instruments available in Adelaide, there began a scramble to amass the necessary ones from within Australia and from Switzerland and Germany, to fit into the wing pods of turbocharged, piston engined ECO-Dimona VH-EOS to undertake the work.

Dr Andrew McGrath, senior research fellow and also a pilot in ARA’s close knit unit of three scientists (two of whom are pilots) and a maintenance expert, said the closure of Adelaide Airport because of the ash cloud caused two days of delays to deliveries.

Qantas sent one vital instrument from Melbourne to Adelaide by taxi, and another was fortuitously in Queensland for cooperative work by ARA and Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and was despatched to Adelaide, and another came from the CSIRO in Perth.

Within five days, working through the night, all the instruments – including those used by Swiss research group Metair and its ECO-Dimona to monitor the ash from last year’s Icelandic volcanic eruption – had arrived at Parafield and were integrated into the wing pods and attached to wings of the ECO-Dimona.

The first flight was made from Adelaide to Kangaroo Island and back on June 22, and the readings confirmed the modelling of the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) in Darwin that the volcanic ash had largely dispersed.

The next day, after installation of further equipment and some fine tuning, VHOBS was ready and departed for Hobart on June 24. The aircraft flew within a 100km sector off Hobart over the next three days, monitoring the cloud and measuring the ash content and the size of the ash particles up to 24,500ft, after gaining clearance from CASA which normally imposes a ceiling of 20,000ft.

“The point was not so much to demonstrate whether it was safe or dangerous to fly, but to validate the information from the VAAC,” Dr McGrath said.

Essentially, the VAAC’s ash density data came from satellite readings, he said, “but eventually the ash cloud gets too thin to measure directly from space,” and airborne validation of the centre’s “quite accurate” meteorological models is required.

ARA, which is part of the School of the Environment at Adelaide’s Flinders University, had collaborated with Metair during the Icelandic eruption – when the Swiss ECO-Dimona was the only aircraft flying in continental European airspace – and there was close collaboration with Metair during the June crisis. Dr McGrath said such important international collaboration could be further fostered following the recent Australian experience.

But future work, including the monitoring of likely Indonesian volcanic eruptions, will require resources to be established at ARA’s Parafield hangar complex for rapid response.

The organisation proposes holding talks with the Australian airline industry and CASA to see whether funds can be found to support the plan.

Peter Gibson, manager of corporate communications for CASA, said the authority was talking to Flinders University and its ARA unit. About its work but had not been asked to take any action at this stage.

CASA will participate in the September meeting of ICAO’s volcanic ash task force.

On July 1, CASA issued a new airworthiness bulletin containing warnings about any aircraft operations in or near Australian or overseas airspace or airports suspected of being contaminated with volcanic ash.

The AWB spells out the many dangers to aircraft engines, systems and airframes from ash and gases released by volcanic eruptions, particularly in the Pacific “ring of fire” stretching from South America up to Japan and down through Indonesia and PNG to New Zealand and beyond.

The bulletin says all operators must conduct a Safety Risk Assessment (SRA) and recommends that flights into areas with visible volcanic ash clouds, and medium to high levels of contamination, should not be conducted. Even low levels of contamination can cause unacceptable airworthiness risks, it adds.

Potentially, says ARA’s director and chief scientist Associate Professor Jorg Hacker, that will give the aviation industry faster access to information on which to base decisions on whether – and where – to fly in the event of another volcanic ash cloud entering Australian and neighbouring airspace.

Dr Hacker came out from Germany in the early 1980s and initiated a move by Flinders University’s meteorology and oceanography school to undertake airborne research work.

The unit began its life with an ultralight aircraft equipped with meteorology instruments and, with funding from the Schultz Foundation, moved up to a motorised glider, the Grob 109, which could fly higher and further. It flew for about 20 years and advanced ARA’s research work and reputation.

The Grob 109 remains mothballed at Parafield, facing a $40,000 engine replacement job before it can go back into service, if the need should arise.

Then in 1996, the unit gained a Major National Research Facilities grant to build a new hangar and maintenance centre at Parafield, and acquire its most spectacular aircraft – the Grob 520T Egrett. The aircraft was devised by Grob for the German air force as a spy plane during the Cold War, and with some similarities to America’s U-2, it could reach heights of 53,000ft.

When the Cold War ended and Germany was reunified, the Egrett became redundant and was acquired from the German government by ARA. Among its many high flying tasks, it was contracted by the Japanese in 1999 for meteorological work and in 2007 it was tasked to test fly instruments for Japan’s GOSAT satellite to monitor greenhouse gases. It also carried out work for the US Air Force around the same time, measuring mountain ‘waves’ and high altitude turbulence. But the Egrett has been sitting in the Parafield hangar for the past two years, with no work in hand for its specialised capabilities.

However, the two flexible ECO-Dimonas have been busy on a variety of research tasks.

Their remote sensing capabilities include highly accurate terrain modelling, underwater mapping to a depth of 30m, assessing the health and distribution of vegetation and crops, measuring soil moisture and studying atmospheric parameters such as air quality and pollution, and turbulence.

ARA’s unique turbulence probe can measure wind in three dimensions and is now used worldwide.

Andrew McGrath says the two aircraft – which were bought new from Diamond and based on a motorised glider – are ideal for airborne research, with their payload of 130kg beneath the 16. 5m wing span and another 30kg in the small luggage compartment, long endurance of more than five hours and a cruising speed of about 90kt from its highly economical, 1200cc Rotax 914 motor, which uses only 12 to 20 litres of unleaded fuel an hour.

It can work at cropduster heights and up to a ceiling of 27,000ft, if permitted, with most of the work undertaken at 1500 to 10,000ft.

ARA has a suite of scientific instruments, some bought ‘off-the-shelf ’ and calibrated at Parafield for specialised work, some developed by the unit. They include multiple hyperspectral and multispectral scanners, and a laser rangefinder, as well as a thermal imaging sensor and digital video cameras.

The self-funding unit within Flinders University’s School of the Environment relies on research contracts, including important Australian Research Council grants. Impending work includes a contract from nuclear agency ANSTO for radon (radioactive gas) detection over Goulburn, which will track atmospheric movement.

Meanwhile, it is resurrecting its educational effort, after falling out of course work, as part of the environmental studies at Flinders University and is planning to attract undergraduate and postgraduate students.

It’s also entered secondary education with federal funds. Under an Australian Space Research Program educational grant, which began recently, Year 11 and 12 students from high schools around Adelaide will plan and undertake remote sensing projects.

The $1 million SA program, coordinated by the Flinders Centre for Science Education, is planned to run for two and a half years, and is aimed at introducing students to the capabilities and possibilities of airborne scientific research work. Airborne Research Australia will fly the missions tasked by the school teams.

The first 100 students received a dramatic introduction. They turned up at the Parafield hangar in the midst of the hectic preparations for the flights to monitor the ash cloud over Hobart.