First Light at the Hokkaido West SuperDARN radar!
By: miker on: Fri., Aug. 22, 2014 10:22 AM EDT (8240 Reads)
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PI Nozomu Nishitani of the Solar-Terrestrial Environment Laboratory (STELab) in Nagoya is pleased to announce that the Hokkaido West radar started operation on October 24, 2014. The first echoes were received after extensive testing by the Japanese licensing authority.
Nishitani-san would like to thank all the people who contributed to the completion of the new radar, in particular, Mick Parsons from Leicester University, who travelled all the way to Japan to make final installation of the radar, and Pasha Ponomarenko and Alexey Oinats, who happened to be staying at Nagoya University during this period and helped with setting up and calibration.
Congratulations to Nishitani-san, and to the Hokkaido West radar team!
Photo: Main array of 16 transmit / receive antennas in foreground and interferometer array of 4 receive-only antennas in background.
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The antenna construction was completed in the beginning of September. The transmitter / receiver system was delivered on 21 October from Leicester University.
Hokkaido West is the second SuperDARN radar on the northernmost Japanese island of Hokkaido and extends the coverage of the mid-latitude SuperDARN chain into northeast Asia. The site lies 1.1 km from the site of the first Hokkaido radar. Both Hokkaido radars are outfitted with electronics from the University of Leicester.
For more information on the the Hokkaido radar project at STELab, see
http://center.stelab.nagoya-u.ac.jp/hokkaido/
