Please see attached referee report.

The authors do a great job of explaining the changes made to the Coptersonde.  Experiments conducted are appropriate and described clearly.  On balance, my comments fall somewhere between "technical corrections" and "minor revisions"  Ultimately, getting this manuscript ready for final publication won't require much effort.

Line 57: Please include references to UAS data from TORUS and TORUS-LItE: https://doi.org/10.26023/FJD8-VMV2-XW0Y, https://doi.org/10.26023/E5PJ-5CN7-VQ0T, and/or citation to Houston et al. (2026).

Line 63: The authors refer to “conventional methods” as the reference for data quality and I assume this to mean radiosondes but if you have other examples in mind you should mention them here.

Line 70: Check formatting of this citation.

Line 73: The authors refer to the possibility of assimilating UAS data into NWP models.  You should include citations to illustrate that this can (and has been) done.

Line 151: Expand GNSS.

Table 1: I know that energy expenditure in hover is a reference used for thrust calculations but hover time isn’t really a useful metric to provide here.

Table 1: The authors really need to specify the assumptions made to get to an estimate of 3000 m max altitude.

Line 163: As I note above, the authors need to be more specific what “theoretical maximum capabilities achievable under the right conditions” actually means.  Some of this is based on analysis presented later which you should reference here, but all maximum values need to have assumptions clearly listed in the table caption and/or the text.

Line 281 and Figure 9b: A “green trend” is referenced but not included.

Line 310: I think the authors mean “non-NOAA-related”.

Line 324: The authors need to explain why the nocturnal inversion would cause sensor response to have “an influence on the results”.

Line 335: I’m not sure what “tighter alignment” means.  Please explain.

Line 335: The authors are assuming that “smoother and more consistent temperature and relative humidity curves” equate to more accurate measurements.  Can the authors defend this? Obviously, the sounding won't capture structures that lead to less smooth profiles but that doesn’t mean it’s correct.  It’s just hard to know, without a high-fidelity reference, what's right.

Line 340: Lower RMSE will be heavily influenced by the variability in the profile, but, as noted above, this doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Line 349: “RMSE for…vertical winds remained below 1 m/s”.  RMSE for vertical wind <1 m/s isn't a valid benchmark. You should note that the RMSE for vertical wind is ~0.25 m/s.

Line 463: No where is it mentioned that the Coptersonde cannot consistently collect reliable observations on descent.  This has to be stated somewhere.  While a deeper dive into the reasons would be great to see, I don’t think it’s necessary for this manuscript.

Houston, A.L., C.C. Weiss, E.N. Rasmussen, M.C. Coniglio, C.L. Ziegler, B.M. Argrow, and E.W. Frew, 2026: Targeted Observation by Radars and UAS of Supercells: TORUS. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Accepted. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-23-0265.1.