Due to some ordering complications, the complete cable replacement wasn't made up in the lab prior to the trip. The last piece of the replacement arrived while at the site though and some testing was preformed while there. However, trying to replace the original cables with a new set that had a few different connectors did not end up working. There was some confusion here as to what pins should be mapping to where and one of the connectors was rewired at the site. In the end, the original cables and connectors were used although with the addition of some liquid electrical tape on the connector that was causing the problem.
In addition to trying to replace the control cables, a network analyzer was brought out to the site to perform electrical length measurements on the long lengths of coax connecting the building to the antenna arrays. These measurements are a first step in calibrating the radars so that they are able to collect accurate elevation angle data.
Also, a number of antennas had been reported to be bad along the arrays. So with some extra time, a good check out of the transmitters, ground coaxs, and antennas was performed. With a few clean ups and replacements, the entire West radar was transmitting, while all but 3 antennas on the East radar were transmitting when the trip ended. A last little bit, some assistance was provided in trying to make some sense of how to work with the all-sky camera that was installed by FHSU on top of the radar equipment building.
Fort Hays Trip, May 2014
By: ksterne on: Thu., July 03, 2014 10:33 AM EDT (8305 Reads)
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In early April, the returns from the Fort Hays radars changed drastically. The problem began on April 4th with very noise signals being recorded on both radars. The original problem seemed to begin with a blown fuse in the PTS160 synthesizer. However, in the process of replacing the fuse, some of the connections on the back of the QNX6 computer must have come loose. In phone and e-mail conversations with Ryan White, FHSU SuperDARN intern, it seemed as though something was wrong with the RXFE or the way the RXFE was being controlled. In the end, it seemed as though a touchy connection between one of the outputs of the QNX6 computer and the control cable was causing the RXFE to not keep the correct settings. A replacement for this connection was put together and a trip was made to the site to repair this connection as well as do an assessment of the site.
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