Hays, KS sustained a major freezing rain and icing event in mid-January 2017. Following reports from FHSU student intern, Brett Chrisler, of significant damage to the West main antenna array a trip was made by engineer Kevin Sterne to assess the damage at the radar site. As well, this trip would be allow for preparations to be made for a future repair trip.

After many, many years, the grounding work along the antenna poles had not been completed. On each antenna pole, a ground rod had been driven into the ground and a copper busbar had been attached under one of the bolts on the base of the pole. So a trip was made to the site by Kevin Sterne, Shibaji Chakraborty and Muhammad Rafiq to complete the grounding work.

Brett Chrisler, the Fort Hays State University student intern, made a trip to the Blacksburg SuperDARN lab in early July. During his trip, Brett would review research areas that he can explore with our group as well as to make a trip to the Blackstone radar to show him another style of SuperDARN radar and gain more hands-on training.

The replacement of the ground coax is a longstanding project that needed to be completed at Goose Bay. In preparation for this project, a work order was placed with Serco to clear all the trees and brush that have taken over the antenna array grounds over the years.

Shortly before the winter break, the internet connection to the radar site went down. Being patient since the availability of people to check on it would probably be low, the connection remained off over the two week winter break. However, our local contact was able to check on the connection for us and noted that the Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) power supply had melted and thus the internet connection was broken. The damage to the PoE unit and the RJ45 connector can be seen in the picture. In order to keep the linux computer’s hard drive from filling up, a trip to the radar site was made to restore the connection. In addition, this trip would be used to install the newly acquired and configured linux computer.

With two visitors from the National Space Science Center (NSSC) in China visiting the Blacksburg lab for two weeks, a trip to the radar site was planned in order to show the visitors the operations and common testing of a working radar site. The visitors, Jiaojiao Zhang and Ailan Lan, as well as Muhammad Rafiq (VT doctoral candidate) and Kevin Sterne made a trip to the site in December. This trip would also serve as wrapping up some loose ends before the end of the year. These loose ends included reinstalling the SmartUPS that needed a new battery after it failed over the summer. Lastly, the Reverse Beacon Network receiver would be disassembled and taken back to the Blacksburg lab as the equipment had been setup on a temporary basis for testing at a radar site. The receiving antenna on top of a stack of antenna poles shortly before it was disassembled is seen in the picture.