Punta Salinas not running in modeA
08aug14
Intro
Punta salinas is a frequency agile radar. It has
20 channels with each channel having two frequency bands separated
by 15 MHz. The observatory has an agreement with punta
Salinas: when arecibo is observing in lband, punta salinas will will
remain in modeA
- ModeA
- chan 3: 1233,1248
- chan 4: 1242, 1256
Arecibo sends their observing schedule marked
with the dates when punta salinas should be in modeA.
Punta salinas did not go to modeA during jul14
The schedules sent to punta salinas for jul14
are:
The hilltop monitoring system runs continuously.
It does a 1 minute peak hold on the 1200 to 1450 MHz band every 20
minutes.
Looking at this data shows that punta salinas did not to move to
modeA during all of the requested times.
The images show dynamic spectra from the hilltop system for
the 1325 MHz band.
- 2 Pages are made for each month
- the top frame of each page is a dynamic spectrum for the month
- horizontal scale is frequency, vertical axis is day of month
- darker is less power, whiter is more power
- the bottom frame is the average over the month for the 1325
MHz band
- Page 1: with all
radars:
- the vertical colored lines flag
- punta
salinas (chan 2,3,4,5,7,10,11,18)
- FAA
radar
- punta
Borinquen radar
- Aerostat
Radar
- Page 2: flag the different freq channels of punts salinas
- channels 2,3,4,5,7,10,11,and 18 are flagged
using different colors
(link to data for all
of 2014)
The data for jun14 shows:
- that chan 4,5,17,10,11,18 was used
sparingly
- channel 2,3 are on most of the time
The data for jul14 shows that
- all channels were used about the same (except for 06-09jul)
when only chan2,3 were used
The total power for some punta salinas frequency channel were
plotted vs the day of the month for jul14.
- 01jul14 thru
j16jul14 (.png)
- 16jul14 thru 31jul14
(.png)
- channels 2,10,11, and 18 are plotted
- the two frequencies for each channel were added
- and offset was added to the last 3 channels for plotting
- the vertical scale is a log (dbm from the spectrum
analyzer).
- the white lines at the bottom of each channel is the zero
baseline.
- This is the value we should have measured if radar was
broadcasting.
- The vertical lines show when modeA was requested by AO:
- green
: start of modeA request
- yellow:
end of modeA request
Summary
- Mode A was channel 3 and 4
- in may2014 punta salinas started using channel 2 and 3 for
modeA
- this is probably to get away from the aerostat that
broadcasts near 1256 MHz
- During jul14 it does not appear that punta salinas went to
modeA when we requested them to.
- Looking at some data in aug14 it seems they are still not
going to modeA
processing:x101/140801/puntSalModA_jul14.pro
home_~phil
