The default pointing directions for the antennas for each experiment
The tables below indicate the standard pointing directions for the antennas for common programme (CP) experiments.
The scan patterns, CP1 – CP7 for each site are shown below the table.
The users can also override the scan patterns with their own scan pattern if they so desire.
| Common Program Scan Patterns | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location* | CP1 | CP2 | CP3 | CP4 | CP5 | CP6 | CP7 |
| UHF | tau2pl | tau2pl | tau1 | tau1 | – | – | – |
| VHF | – | – | – | tau8 | – | manda | tau8 |
| ESR | steffe | steffe | tau0 | tau0 | – | manda | tau7(tau0) |
* UHF – Mainland UHF system; VHF – Mainland VHF system; ESR – Svalbard radar
CP Scan Patterns
The mainland system is represented by the trace on the right and the ESR system by the trace on the left. In the case where the ESR 32m dish is not pointing field aligned a blue trace indicates the 42m antenna and a red indicates the 32m antenna. The circles denote the common volumes that were sampled by the mainland tristatic UHF system. The present tristatic VHF system has limited pointing capabilities.
For example, the CP1 schematic shows that the UHF was able to make tristatic measurements in a single position (the trace on the right). The tristatic VHF is similar but the transmitter points vertically, compare CP6. The ESR runs with either the 32m of 42m dish pointing field aligned (the 42m dish is fixed in the field aligned direction).
The CP2 scan pattern shows that the UHF scans 4 different positions. The ESR uses the 42m field aligned and the moving 32m dish to cover 4 different positions.
CP3 is a latitudinal scan, CP4 is low elevation north for polar cap phenomena, CP6 is similar to CP1 but for middle atmospheric phenomena (note that the VHF points vertically), and CP7 is for the topside ionosphere.
