Prior to the SuperDARN 2019 workshop held in Fujiyoshida, Japan during the first week of June, 2019, Dr. Mark Lester of Leicester University had indicated his intention to step down as Chair of the SuperDARN Executive Council. During PI discussions at the workshop it was decided to replace Dr. Lester with a new Chair and two Vice Chairs. The new Chair is Prof. Kathryn McWilliams of the University of Saskatchewan and the Vice Chairs are Prof. Nozomu Nishitani of ISEE / Nagoya University and Dr. Aurélie Marchaudon of IRAP/CNRS/IPEV.

Mark thanks all members of the SuperDARN community for their help and support and states that it was his privilege to have been the lead PI over the last 15 years.

Congratulations to Kathryn, Nozomu, and Aurélie!

Pictured: Prof. Kathryn McWilliams at the SuperDARN Workshop 2019 (Fujiyoshida, Japan)

Photo credit: SD2019 General Organizing Committee

Dr.Tsutomu Nagatsuma has announced that the web site is open for registration and submission of abstracts to the 2019 SuperDARN Workshop which will be held at the Highland Resort Hotel & Spa in Fujiyoshida, Japan, June 2-7, 2019. The Workshop is sponsored by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), the Nagoya University Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research (ISEE), the International Center for Space Weather Science and Education Kyushu University (ICSWSE), and the University of Electro-Communications (UEC). The Workshop website is http://superdarn2019.nict.go.jp/. Note the following due dates:
Abstracts: EXTENDED TO APRIL 19
Early bird registration: April 27
Accomodation booking: April 28

Dr. Nozoumu Nishitani has announced the publication of the paper "Review of the accomplishments of Mid-latitude Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) HF Radars" in the journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science (PEPS). This represents the culmination of a three year effort by SuperDARN collaborators with funding from the Joint Research Program of ISEE, Nagoya University (ISEE/CICR International Workshop). The main workshop was held January 10-14, 2017 with the participants pictured here (link to workshop news item via http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=257).
The link to the PEPS review paper is: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40645-019-0270-5
An ISEE news article is posted at http://www.isee.nagoya-u.ac.jp/en/research-results/20190318.html
How to cite and other information is provided in the 'Read More' part of this news item.

Congratulations to Nishitani-san and collaborators on achieving this important milestone!

Dr. Federica Marcucci of the Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (INAF) has announced that the SuperDARN Dome C North (DCN) radar located at Franco-Italian base Concordia, at Dome C (Antarctica), is now in operation and the first data look good. In her words:
'The radar was installed by a team composed by David Biondi - INAF, Alessandro Cirioni, Angelo De Simone, Angelo Olivieri, Andrea Satta and Enrico Simeoli - CNR and with the really fundamental support of Jan Wiid.
I also have the pleasure to mention that the installation was made possible by the hard work of other people belonging to the logistics of Concordia and, in general, to PNRA and IPEV.
Completing the installation of DCE and DCN radars has been really a collaborative effort and I wish to mention the work of Igino Coco and Aurèlie Marchaudon, at the beginning of the project, and of Simona Longo, Stefano Massetti and Giuseppe Pallocchia in most recent years.
I wish also to thank a lot the many of you, and people of your teams, who helped giving valuable advice whenever we asked for.
Finally yet importantly, I wish to pay a tribute to Ermanno and Jean-Paul, the fathers of SuperDARN radars at Dome C.
The Concordia radars were funded by PNRA and INAF from the Italian side and by IPEV and INSU from the French side.

Congratulations to Team Dome C!

PI Dag Lorentzen has reported an unfortunate incident at the site of the Longyearbyen SuperDARN radar. In his words: 'All masts in both the main and interferometer array broke down due to high winds and ice loading. Although the antenna arrays have withstood two Svalbard winters, the current combined icing and wind conditions were enough to break the masts, most likely due to the heavy load of the fence and guy wires. The shipping container with the radar electronics is undamaged. With winter approaching we will unfortunately not be able to make any repairs, so the radar will most likely be out of commission for about 1 year.'

It was noted that the radar had been producing excellent data. The entire SuperDARN community hopes for a speedy recovery.

On behalf of the Data Analysis Working Group chaired by Pasha Ponomarenko, Evan Thomas has announced a new release of the Radar Software Toolkit (RST). The new version is labelled RST 4.2 and includes a number of new features (see 'Read More'). Archives of RST 4.2 may be downloaded using these links:
https://github.com/SuperDARN/rst/archive/v4.2.zip
https://github.com/SuperDARN/rst/archive/v4.2.tar.gz
A citable DOI is again available for this version of the software (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1403226) and updated documentation is available at the link below:
https://superdarn.github.io/rst/
Many thanks to those who contributed to this new release: P. V. Ponomarenko (our WG chair), D. D. Billett, E. C. Bland, A. G. Burrell, K. Kotyk, A. S. Reimer, M. Schmidt, S. G. Shepherd, K. T. Sterne, and M.-T. Walach