The SuperDARN/CUTLASS radars operated in a high resolution with time resolution of 1 second and range resolution of 15 km over the Tromsø heating region. The transmissions will be cycled quickly through three frequencies.

The SuperDARN/CUTLASS radars are operated by Leicester University, Prof. Mark Lester, PI. The scheduling of the radars is handled by Prof. Tim Yeoman. For more information about CUTLASS, including how to access the real-time links to the radars, see

http://www.ion.le.ac.uk/cutlass/(external link)

The Heating facility is situated in Ramfjordmoen, near Tromso in northern Norway, next to the EISCAT UHF and VHF incoherent scatter radars. The facility was built by the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Sonnensystemforschung in collaboration with the University of Tromso in 1979. In January 1993 the facility was transferred to EISCAT. For more information about EISCAT, see

http://www.eiscat.uit.no/(external link)


Tim's notes on radar mode during the heating experiment:

Control options

HEATmono-jul-12.finland

-offset 400 -intt 3
-frA 480 -frB 480
-rgA 15 -rgB 15
-lbA 5 -hbA 5
-lbB 5 -hbB 5
-b0A 2 -b1A 6 -b2A 9
-b0B 2 -cpidB -26999

There are the radar control options. It is a little overcomplicated as it is a stereo control list. The important elements are

intt (beam dwell time),
frA (range to first gate),
rgA (gate length),
lbA, hbA (scan beam range, 1 beam only here).
Note beam 15 is best for Iceland assuming a field parallel heater beam.
-b0A etc. (selected frequency bands, a three frequency sweep here. Only one frequency is possible at a
time, so a 3 s dwell with 3 frequencies gives a 9s repeat time).

We can adjust all these parameters on the fly, although how much effort wecan make for this at short notice will depend on other commitments at this end. Should you cancel a run it would be good to know so we can revert to the proper schedule. A small frequency sweep is usually a good place to start at least. I think it may be best to change the dwell to 1s for Finland. 2s is more appropriate for Iceland as it will propagate on a 1.5 hop mode. If conditions are not good, we might need to increase this. Let me know if this mode doesn't meet your requirements.

It would be useful to familiarise yourselves with the realtime monitoring java resource. Go to

http://www.ion.le.ac.uk/cutlass/cutlass.html(external link)

click the realtime button, and launch java

If you right click in range-time parameter plot for options, you will get a zoom function, and a ruler, which I find very useful for guiding the eye if you have a regular heater on/off cycle, which I assume you will.