
Flight mission day starts with a call from the mission scientist to the airport giving the ‘OK’ to fly. Until that happens the waiting time can be quite long, but the great hospitality of the UND crew and the magical interpretation of “O Ken Karenga” by Tony “always in tune” Grainger assures that everyone in the airport has a good time.
I can describe my flight experience as first, being glued to the floor while being as close as possible to the pilots to stare at all the instruments in the cockpit, with particular interest in the on-board radar. Then, testing my reflexes by taking off my headphones as soon as possible when we flew too close to electrical activity (in some occasions, the effect of lightning in the headset was so loud that even if I held them as far as my arm could reach I could still hear that screeching sound quite clearly), and finally, looking out the window and thinking of a happy place to calm down my stomach while the UND Citation did some nice spirals around the Central Facility. 🙂
This was a nocturnal flight, so I thought it wasn’t going to be a visually attractive one, but the clouds illuminated by the full moon and lightning on our way back to the airport quickly proved me wrong. End result: this experience will be a hard one to forget and for all good reasons.
Submitted by Paloma Borque, graduate student, McGill University