This paper provides an overview of the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) field campaign, held from 14–20 July 2018. This field campaign spanned a one-week deployment to Colorado’s San Luis Valley, involving over 100 students, scientists, engineers, pilots, and outreach coordinators. This overview paper provides insight into the campaign for a special issue focused on the data sets collected during LAPSE-RATE.

This article describes the systems, processes and procedures used by researchers from the University of Kentucky (UK) for the Lower Atmospheric Profiling Studies at Elevation – a Remotely-piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) in the San Luis Valley in Colorado, USA. Using unmanned aerial systems (UAS) as the primary data-gathering tool, UK supported multi-point, multi-system measurements of drainage flow, boundary layer transition, convection initiation and aerosol concentration.