Free access to airborne facilities for European research teams
European scientific teams are being offered free access to their airborne facilities under the CAATER (coordinated access to aircraft for transnational environmental research) project. The German DLR, the French INSU/CNRS and METEO-France, and the UK Met Office, funded by the European Commission through the Human Research Potential programme of the Fifth Framework programme, are offering the facility. The objective of CAATER is to allow scientific teams within Europe transnational access to any of the four aircraft (DLR-Falcon, INSU-ARAT/Fokker 27, METEO-France-MERLIN IV and Met Office-C-130), to undertake research, and gain an appreciation of the potential of atmospheric research aircraft. CAATER allows for a total of about six user groups on each facility over the three year period, which started in 2000. This is equivalent to about 10 flight hours per user group. Each campaign is free of charge for the selected projects. This includes travel and accommodation for up to three scientists for one preparatory meeting, for the campaign, and for one post-campaign meeting. EC rules will not allow direct funding for teams coming from the same country as that of the research infrastructure. In addition, due to the enforced change in aircraft platform by INSU/CNRS, no user groups will be offered access from this call on the ARAT/Fokker 27. The deadline for this second announcement of opportunity (AO) is 14 September 2001. The allocation committee will meet in mid October to select projects. The final decision will be given to the investigators by mid November 2001 (after approval by EC) and these campaigns are expected to fly during 2002 and 2003.