New NSF/UW King Air Atmospheric Research Aircraft To Be Unveiled During Two Campus Events

The new National Science Foundation (NSF)/University of Wyoming King Air Atmospheric Research Aircraft is getting set to take flight, with its first research mission slated for summer 2025.

To highlight this future milestone, UW and the Department of Atmospheric Science will host two celebrations during Homecoming Week to note the arrival of the research aircraft.

The first will be an open house from 2-4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, at the Donald L. Veal Research Flight Center, located at 5766 Wyoming Highway 130 outside of Laramie. The public can tour the aircraft and learn about the research that will be conducted by the NSF/UW King Air research aircraft. The second event, scheduled Friday, Sept. 27, is a ribbon cutting for the new aircraft that will take place at approximately 12:30 p.m. after the UW Board of Trustees meeting. The event will include UW administrators and members of the Board of Trustees. The public is invited.

"The University of Wyoming is truly unique in having this capability. No other university around the country has an airborne research facility of the scale as the NSF/UW King Air," says Jeff French, an associate professor and head of the UW Department of Atmospheric Science. "Having such a facility at UW now means we are the only university where graduate students can go and have hands-on experience working with airborne instruments. A student can simply walk down the hall and talk to a research scientist whose job it is to support instruments on the aircraft. Access to that type of expertise is one of a kind in our field."

French adds that, at other universities, students must team up with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NASA or the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to gain such research experiences.

Tale of the Tape

The cost of the aircraft and its associated modifications -- including its design, installation and certification -- is approximately $13.4 million. UW invested approximately $4.5 million into the baseline aircraft, along with the new avionics suite of instruments. NSF invested about $8.9 million in the design, installation and certification of the new aircraft.

The NSF funding portion was paid through an NSF Mid-scale Research Infrastructure (MSRI) Award to UW that totaled $15.7 million. Roughly $7 million from the MSRI Award came from NSF to build and acquire research infrastructure, along with new instrumentation for the new aircraft.

"This includes everything from cabling to racks; physical instruments, such as new lidars; upgrades to existing radars; and acquisition of new atmospheric chemistry and aerosol equipment," French says. "We also are reusing much of the existing instruments from the old aircraft. Only a portion of our instruments will be mounted on the aircraft for any given research project, depending on the goals of that project. The key is to have a flexible aircraft platform that can make measurements for a range of different atmospheric phenomena."

Since 1987, UW's King Air has been supported and funded through a series of cooperative agreements between UW and NSF. This will continue with the new research aircraft, as UW will receive nearly $3 million annually to maintain the aircraft.

Most of the funds support personnel, which includes some portion of three professional pilots, two aircraft mechanics and 13 research scientists, engineers and technicians. In total, 18 people are funded half time or more, and several others receive partial funding -- a few months -- per year. On average, two UW graduate students per year also will be funded through the cooperative agreement.

Additionally, operations of the aircraft -- actual flights and deployment of the aircraft to other locales around the country or world -- are funded through supplements to the cooperative agreement. This can amount to several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, depending on the number and scale of projects in any given year, French says.

Expanded Capabilities

The new research aircraft is a King Air 350i base model. Compared to the former UW research aircraft -- a Beechcraft King Air 200T that was a twin-engine turboprop -- the new King Air has larger and more powerful engines, a more modern avionics suite of instruments, and additional fuel tanks, French says.

These additions will allow the new aircraft's maximum take-off weight to increase to 16,500 pounds, which is 1,500 pounds greater than the normal 350i model and 2,500 pounds more than the old King Air. While technically still a King Air 350i, the upgrades to this aircraft make it something much more capable than a standard 350i, French says.

"This allows us to carry more research equipment and/or more fuel so that we can trade off between more instruments/measurement capacities or longer range/endurance. The aircraft also produces more electrical power that can be used by research equipment and has more in-cabin space," French explains. "The design of the research modifications, such as locations where we can install instruments on the outside of the aircraft, is much more numerous than the old aircraft. We can carry almost twice the weight of instruments under the wings, install larger probes on the fuselage and on the nose of the aircraft, compared to the old King Air."

"Large ports" in the fuselage will allow more capable radars and lidars on the aircraft to better measure the atmosphere. The additional fuel tanks provide the aircraft a greater range.

"Having this type of flexibility is helpful for being able to achieve a wider variety of scientific objectives," French says.

Research Set to Start Next Year

The old King Air operated from 1977 until it was retired in August 2022. It flew roughly 9,000 research hours during that 45-year period, logging thousands of flights. A typical research flight lasted between 3.5 and four hours, French says.

"During the first 10 years of existence, most of the research focused on cloud physics and cloud seeding, funded, in large part, by the Bureau of Reclamation," he says. "Beginning in 1987, when UW and NSF entered into their first cooperative agreement, the type of research conducted by the aircraft became much broader, although cloud physics has always played an important role."

With the new King Air, research projects will continue to center on cloud physics, aerosols, air quality and energy exchange between the surface of Earth and its lower atmosphere. However, research will expand into atmospheric chemistry.

"We've done very little of that with the past aircraft because the instrumentation for atmospheric chemistry tends to be larger and more power hungry," French says. "One thing that really excites us about the new aircraft is that we will be able to support more experiments that cross traditional boundaries -- that is, combine multiple areas of atmospheric science on a single aircraft project. While larger aircraft, such as the NSF/NCAR C-130, are better suited for that, the new NSF/UW King Air will be able to begin supporting a bit more of that type of research."

"The NSF/UW King Air fills a niche by providing a nimble aircraft that is particularly well suited to atmospheric boundary layer and near-cloud research," adds Nicholas Anderson, program director of the Physical and Dynamic Meteorology Program in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. "The NSF/UW King Air can fly slower than the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream V, meaning that more in situ samples can be measured, and it can handle most complex flight paths that would be unreasonable for a large aircraft, such as the C-130. The NSF/UW King Air also is less expensive to operate, providing an easier pathway into airborne atmospheric measurements for early-career investigators or small teams that don't require expansive instrument payloads."

The first flight campaign for the NSF/UW King Air will take place in Salt Lake City in summer 2025. The Salt Lake City Summer Ozone Study is being led by Emily Fischer, a professor of atmospheric research at Colorado State University, and will investigate the formation of ozone over the Salt Lake Valley during summer. Scientists from the University of Utah, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Montana also will be involved.

Currently, there are more than a half-dozen projects that are in various stages of proposal that seek to request use of the new NSF/UW King Air in 2025, 2026 and 2027, French says.

It Belongs to UW

While UW has multiple partners, the new NSF/UW King Air is officially owned by UW and, therefore, it is regarded as a "civil aircraft," meaning that it is not owned by the federal government, French says. The other two atmospheric research aircraft funded by NSF are operated in Boulder, Colo., by NCAR, but both are owned by NSF.

"Being a civil aircraft can make some things a bit easier for our operations, especially in foreign countries," French stresses. "When a federal aircraft goes to a foreign country, it requires diplomatic clearances, while our aircraft can be operated under 'normal rules' as any other civil aircraft."

Avcon Industries Inc. was the project management company and led the detailed design, flight testing and approval of the new NSF/UW King Air, says Marcus Abendroth, president of Avcon. For over 50 years, Avcon has designed complex special-mission and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft modifications.

Avcon has provided aircraft modifications for DOE, NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of Naval Research, the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army, among many others, says Aric Peters, vice president of Butler National Corp. and director of sales for Avcon.

"While this project is not the largest Avcon has done, it was the most complex project we have ever completed for flight testing," Peters says. "This project was broken up into multiple independent supplemental type certificate (STC) pieces, and then an overall STC was completed to make the project manageable and successful."

One of those independent pieces focused on flight testing hours.

"There were close to 100 total flight hours flown for the certification of the individual STCs and the overall encompassing STC for the University of Wyoming," Abendroth says. "Those included climb performance, handling qualities, high-altitude high-speed flight and numerous other test points to ensure that we are providing the safest aircraft possible."

Based on the modification designs provided by Avcon, the aircraft met all Federal Aviation Administration requirements successfully, Abendroth adds.

While the aircraft may be owned by UW, NSF has significant investment in its development and operation. The use of the NSF/UW King Air is dictated by the review of the scientific proposals that are received at NSF, Anderson says.

"Traditionally, we would expect two or three projects a year, with different levels of complexity," Anderson says. "Historically, the King Air has averaged around 150 flight hours per year under NSF support.

"NSF values the partnership with the state of Wyoming and the University of Wyoming," he adds. "We are excited to see what kinds of new projects the community has in store for the King Air once the new capabilities have been demonstrated."