NOAA Tower

I try and keep this blog more focused on my personal thoughts on life and what I've been doing with my spare time. However, I was able to do something so fun associated with school that I felt like it deserved a little blurb.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration happens to have one of their central offices here in Boulder. As part of that, they have a 300 meter tall instrumentation tower located about 30-40 minutes from here. (For those of you stuck in English units its about 1000 ft.) Part of my senior design project has to do with dropping deployable sensor packages from an unmanned aerial vehicle in the Arctic. Needless to say, we have to test said sensor packages (sondes) before sending them off to the most pristine environment on Earth. So, we got to drop things off a 300 m tower. :) If you're interested in seeing the footage you can check out one of the videos on youtube.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eleNomImeWw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPpysHKlkKI

It was a little intimidating at first. The first day we wen't it was freezing and so windy we couldn't go to the top! And the second day we went it was 75-80 outside and one of the most beatiful days you could have asked for. I guess that's Colorado for you.


Ryan and I at the top of the tower. There's not much room to move around.


A look down the center of the tower from the very top. Seriously, it disappears into nowhere!


A view of the upper half of the tower from the parking lot. It was impossible to get the whole thing in one shot.