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Persistent URL http://purl.org/net/epubs/work/62291
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Record Id 62291
Title The effects of almost 20 years of operation on the performance of the Aberystwyth MST Radar
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Abstract The MST Radar at Aberystwyth, a 46.5 MHz Doppler beam swinging instrument, was constructed in 1989/1990. The hardware has remained virtually unchanged ever since. For the first few years the radar was operated on a campaign basis, i.e. for up to a few days at a time (using one of a number of different observation formats) and with gaps of up to a few days in-between. Since late 1997 it has been operated on a quasi-continuous basis, with a typical down-time of no more than 2% (i.e. an accumulation of less than 8 days in a year). Although it is still a powerful system, the performance has noticeably decreased over the past few years. Whereas the typical maximum useful altitude for wind-profiling purposes (using an off-vertical angle of 6 degrees)was around 20 km in 2000, it is now closer to 15 km almost a decade later. Consequently a detailed review of the entire system was undertaken in late 2008 with a view to carrying out an upgrade. This poster will present the findings of that review, describing how well the different components of the system have aged over almost 20 years of operation.
Organisation STFC , RALSP , RAL Space - EOASD
Keywords wind-profile , degradation , Engineering , atmospheric radar
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Language English (EN)
Type Details URI(s) Local file(s) Year
Paper In Conference Proceedings In 12th International Workshop on Technical and Scientific Aspects of MST Radar (MST12), London, Ontario, Canada, 17-23 May 2009, (2010). eastment-et-al_20…stwyth-mst-radar.pdf 2010