Subject: Cascades2 report for Sun evening, Mar 1/2.

   Very close but no go.  We sat at T-2min for the
last part of the window hoping that the minimal
activity we saw might develop.  We were in for
winds, and had clear skies at all sites.  And,
we had a nearly 2-hour stretch of Bz-south, something
we haven't seen in a while.  However, there wasn't
a whole lot of Bz to be south, so there wasn't any
significant loading of the magnetosphere.  The auroral
oval barely reached down to Toolik, and no current
signatures were visible south of Kaktovic.
   It was a close call and a difficult decision,
but in retrospect a correct one.  Had we launched,
we probably would have met some of the secondary
science goals, but would not have met the primary
ones.  The sky was black over the apogee region (we
would have caught up with the auroral activity
partly down the downleg).  This means that all of
our efforts to design and place the 5-payload array
for field-aligned propagation at apogee would have
been for naught.
   It was really very minimal activity and there was 
less than threshold current level behind it;  it never
reached south of Toolik, let alone Ft Yukon or Poker,
and was not visible at Poker either with cameras 
or with Pfisr.
   So, we would have possibly met some of our secondary 
science goals (as my advisor Roger Arnoldy always says,
there's always some aurora), but it would have been 
a waste of a beautiful rocket on a less-than-marginal 
event.
   We are promised more activity and continued good
weather monday night.  Only two more nights to try
this window.
   Waiting for my rocket to come....
-K