Time: 14:00 PM, August 18(Thursday), 2016 

Location: Room 701 of Astronomy Lab Building 

Topic:  An astronomer’s eyes above clouds, an amateur’s glance at aviation 

Caller:  Dali Kong, Yang Yu 

Dr. Dali Kong is a research fellow of planetary fluid dynamics, working in University of Exeter, UK and closely collaborating with our Key Laboratory of Planetary Sciences, CAS, during past few years. Though almost fully devoted to his researches, yet meanwhile, Dr. Kong has been enthusiastically involved in amateur aviation. South West England provides him with a fascinating airspace above the most beautiful rural and costal territory. His flight experiences including at least five unpowered flights in a Schleicher ASK-21 glider and three powered flights in a Piper PA-38 microlight. Apart from real flying, bearing a cross-crew instrument certificate of Airbus A330/A340 flight simulators, Dr. Kong is a member of VATSIM, an international virtual flying network, and has flown a range of inter-continental flights in the shared virtual world. He is also interested in avionics and air traffic control (ATC) technology. He owns his air-band radio receiver and a 1090MHz ADS-B antenna. By sharing the received real-time flights information, Dr. Kong has been a volunteer of ADS-B data feeder (T-EGTE10/T-ZSSS6) to the popular live air traffic tracking service Flightradar24.com. In recent years, he also has done some efforts helping a Chinese media, http://www.carnoc.com/, translating some aviation news into English, some of which has been under public spotlight. In this session, Dr. Kong would like to share his interesting stories, memory and experiences about planes, flights and modern air traffic situations, from an astronomer’s special angle. All are encouraged to attend!