During Aug 22nd to the 27th, I made a trip to the Christmas Valley radar site as a preparation for the eventual build of a new dual SuperDARN radar site. I joined Simon Shepherd and one of his undergraduate students, Matt Knight, from Dartmouth College. Simon and his team are the site P.I.'s for this build and my role was to provide assistance and knowledge from experience gained during the Fort Hays, Kansas build.

This trip mostly consisted of inventorying all the necessary pieces for the first phase of the build. This first phase will include putting together the poles that are necessary for constructing the wire antenna array. After inventorying all the necessary pieces, any additional preparation work that could be accomplished was done. Pre-assembly of shackles and turnbuckles was done as well as extending almost all of the turnbuckles to their full length. Transmitter tracks were unpacked and a few items assembled on to the racks. Two transmitters were unpacked, sliders put on, and mounted on the sliders in the transmitter rack. Also, Simon went about constructing short saw horses with supporting wedges that will be used for putting the poles together.

This trip also consisted of collecting packing slips vital for the proper payment to our suppliers and documentation for our purchasing system.