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

As announced by Mark Lester at the 2018 SuperDARN Workshop in Banyuls-sur-mere (France) SuperDARN PI Professor Jim Wild will give the 2018 Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) James Dungey Lecture. The presentation will be made at the Ordinary Meeting scheduled for December 14 at the Geological Society, Burlington House, London. Jim took his doctorate at Leicester University and is now Professor of Space Physics at Lancaster University’s Department of Physics. The RAS citation can be found at

https://www.ras.org.uk/images/stories/awards/winners/2018/James%20Dungey%20Lecturer%20-%20Jim%20Wild.pdf

Congratulations to Jim on this high honour!

Yoshi Miyoshi (ISEE/Nagoya University) and Iku Shinohara (ISAS/JAXA) have announced the availability of Level-2 CDF files of Arase (ERG) data. Arase (ERG) is a mission to elucidate acceleration and loss mechanisms of relativistic electrons in the radiation belts during geospace storms. Collaborations with SuperDARN researchers are encouraged.

The particle, plasma, plasma waves, and electromagnetic fields in the inner magnetosphere are measured by the onboard instruments of Arase. The Level-2 CDF files of all eight instruments and the SPEDAS Plug-in modules to handle these CDF files are available at the ERG Science Center.

For a complete listing of links and a message from the ERG project team, click 'Read More'

Dr. Aurélie Marchaudon has announced that the “Planets, Environments and Space Plasmas” (PEPS) team of the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) of Toulouse (National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS and University Toulouse 3 - Paul Sabatier, UT3) will host the SuperDARN Workshop 2018 at the Oceanological Observatory of Banyuls-sur-Mer (Occitanie, France) from the 3rd to the 8th of June 2018. The website is open for late registration until May 27. Workshop website: https://superdarn2018.sciencesconf.org/?forward-action=index&forward-controller=index&lang=en

A first version of the programme is online at: https://superdarn2018.sciencesconf.org/program/details