Today Polar 5 took to the skies for the first research flight for the COMPEX campaign! The flight proceeded along it’s planned route, heading north-west from Longyearbyen, over Ny-Ålesund and then west towards the sea-ice edge, before turning back along the same track. On board were a G-band and W-band radar, AMALi-Lidar, spectral imagers, broadband radiometers, and drop-sondes. We are pleased to report that all of the instruments were well behaved and returned nice data! Conditions were as expected from the previous day’s flight planning, with some low level cloud over the sea-ice and ocean. The flight passed over multiple leads (middle picture), which is great news as they are of particular interest for the campaign. We are keeping an eye on the weather while we plan flights for the coming days – looking forward to capture some clouds under cold air outbreaks!