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Persistent URL http://purl.org/net/epubs/work/62293
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Record Id 62293
Title The diagnosis of a range gating problem suffered by the Aberystwyth MST Radar
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Abstract When the MST Radar at Aberystwyth began operations in 1989, the control and data acquisition functions were performed by a PDP11 computer. An upgrade to a WindowsNT-based system was carried out in 1999, shorty before the member of staff responsible retired. Although the system was robust, it was difficult to modify (owing to the peculiarities of both WindowsNT and of the original programmer's style). This became particularly problematic when the hard drive failed on the master PC. Although operations were quickly resumed using a backup PC, porting the system to another WindowsNT or Windows2000 PC proved to be non-trivial. Consequently a re-write of the software (for a Linux PC) became necessary. Unfortunately, owing to a lack of documentation for the original system and to the often-impenetrable nature of the code, this introduced an error of 4 range gates (equivalent to an altitude offset of almost 600 m) into the new system. This poster will examine the effects of the problem on the quality of the data (some, but not all, of which were immediately obvious) and on the methods used to identify the cause.
Organisation SSTD , STFC , RAL Space - EOASD
Keywords data quality , wind-profile , 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). hooper-et-al_2010…e-gating-problem.pdf 2010