Punta Salinas blanking sector

Dec2013

Links

Intro

Punta salinas blanks their radar in the AO direction. Back in 2006 we did a test with them checking various blanking sector widths. Prior and after this test, the blanking region was set to 90 degrees ( +/- 45 degrees in the AO direction).
In nov13 I noticed that the blanking had been changed to 22 degrees. Using a2130 data i searched back to see when the blanking changed.

The plots below show total power vs time for the mode A frequencies of punta salinas (1232.8,1242.2,1248.9, 1257.0). 1.3 Mhz about each radar frequency was used.

Each plot has 5 12 second rotations plotted for a single day
The horizontal scale is blown up around the blanking interval..
The blanking time and number of degrees is written on each plot.

date	blanking time	blanking degrees
01dec11 (.ps) (.pdf)	2.63	78.8
03may12 (.ps) (.pdf)	2.64	79.2
14may12 (.ps) (.pdf)	2.56	76.9
22jun12 (.ps) (.pdf)	.75	22.4
24aug13 (.ps) (.pdf)	.76	22.8
26nov13 (.ps) (.pdf)	.75	22.5

Summary

punta salinas blanking sector changed from 78 deg to 22 degrees sometime between 14may12 and 22jun12
It has remained at 78 degrees at least through 26nov13.

processing: x101/131126/puntasalblank.pro

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