Goose Bay Riometer Installation - Oct. 2015
By: ksterne on: Thu., Nov. 05, 2015 03:17 PM EST (6975 Reads)
|
|
Over the Summer 2015 in talks between VT SuperDARN and University of Calgary groups, it was noticed that there was a gap in riometer coverage in the Labrador area. The University of Calgary group was interested in installing a riometer at the Goose Bay SuperDARN site in order to fill in this gap. After a few months of planning and coordination, a trip was made by Kevin Sterne (from VT) and Craig Unick (University of Calgary) to the Goose Bay site to install the riometer.
|
A riometer listens to the galactic noise at 30 MHz and measures periods where the noise weakens as a sign of ionospheric absorption. The electronics used for this instrument are very tried-and-true and have been greatly simplified to an antenna, a comparitor circuit as well as some other simple circuits, and a ADC converter housed within a fairly common computer. So while on site, the antenna was constructed using a somewhat newer approach of having a floating support structure. As well the electronics were setup and networking configured within the SuperDARN radar hut to provide the power and network that the riometer instrument required. Time was short for the installation due to delays in materials arriving at the site and further adjustments and calibartions to the system would be performed on a following trip.
With some other time, Kevin Sterne, did some routine checks while at the radar site including checking the condition of the +30 year old towers and receive path checks that were found to be a major problem during the Oct. 2014 Kapuskasing trip. Even though each and every tower had been checked and loose struts bolted back down during the Aug. 2013 trip, a number of loose or missing struts were found among the 20 antenna towers. Ones closer to the ground were most common and were easily bolted back down. However, a few struts were found to be blown off from near the tops of the towers on two of the interferometer towers.
Turning attention inside the building, the receive paths were checked for all 16 transmitters and only 3 needed attention. No additional action was taken on making repairs as time ran out during this trip. However, this helps identify needs during a future trip to make repairs on these transmitters.
As a last bit here, a few new coaxial cable hangers were taken up to the site and tested out being installed on the log periodic towers. These cable hangers have become a standard amongst the twin-termianted folded dipole (TTFD) antenna arrays at the mid-latitudes, but have yet to be installed at the Goose Bay and Kapuskasing sites. The work here tested how easy it was to installed these hangers on the towers as well as what additional parts may be needed. These hangers are hoped to be installed at both VT Canadian radar sites when the major coaxial cable replacement project is taken on.
