2013 SuperDARN Workshop (hosted by the University of Saskatchewan)
May 26-31, 2013
Temple Gardens Mineral Spa
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada

https://ocs.usask.ca/conf/index.php/superdarn/superdarn2013

Nearly 70 people from ten countries are registered to attend the 2013 SuperDARN Workshop in Moose Jaw. The participants include scientists, engineers, students, representatives from national agencies, and representatives from industry.

The venue for the meeting is the Temple Gardens Mineral Spa Resort.

Scientific and technical sessions will be held from Monday to Friday.

The recreational activities include an excursion to Regina to visit the "Depot" Division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a World Cup of Soccer.

New this year:
SuperDARN Grad School
May 22-24, 2013 at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
(Transportation from Saskatoon to Moose Jaw for the SuperDARN Workshop will be arranged.)

Drs. Simon Shepherd (Dartmouth College) and Raymond Greenwald (Virginia Tech) are making a visit to the island of Graciosa in the Azores to advance the plan for building the fourth and final pair of SuperDARN MSI radars. They are meeting with the mayor of Santa Cruz Da Graciosa, Sen. José Ramos Aguiar, and local contractors. Simon reports:

Feb 2: 'We had a very pleasant ceremony this morning at the future site of the Graciosa SuperDARN radars. It is perhaps one of the most spectacular sites we have built radars. Brief presentations were given by Luis Santos (Direcção Regional da Ciência, Tecnologia e Comunicações) and myself before signing the lease. A final presentation was given by the Secretary of the President of the Azores. The ceremony was attended by many citizens including the mayor of Santa Cruz Da Graciosa and several of the press.' Click here to see photos of the signing ceremony. Also see: http://www.rtp.pt/icmblogs/rtp/graciosa/?k=SuperDarn-na-Graciosa.rtp&post=43318

SuperDARN radars in the Azores will extend the coverage provided by the mid-latitude MSI radar chain across the Atlantic and into the European sector. Builds have been completed in Kansas (2009), Oregon (2010) and Alaska (2012).

The MSI team acknowledges the generous assistance provided by the Regional Government of the Azores (RGA), in particular the involvement of Mr. Luis Santos. The team also thanks Mr. Rafael A. Perez, Principal Officer to the Azores (Consulate of the United States) for coordinating activities and providing invaluable guidance.

A combined Italian and French team has announced first light at the Dome C site in Antarctica. The PI for the project, Dr. Ermanno Amata, reports:

'I am happy to announce that the SuperDARN Dome C East (DCE) radar is now in operation.

The radar was installed by a team of three French from LPC2E-CNRS - Gilles Chalumeau, Stéphane Chévrier and Frédéric Savoie - and four "Italians" - Simona Longo, Stefano Massetti, Lukazs Polanski and Jan Wiid (actually, Polanski is a Polish guy working in Italy and Wiid is from South-Africa through Saskatoon)-. The radar was funded by PNRA, INAF and CNR from the Italian side, and by IPEV and INSU from the French side. I also have the pleasure to mention that the installation was made possible by the hard work of other people belonging to the logistics of Concordia and, in general, to PNRA and IPEV.

The radar is located at 1.4 km from the Franco-Italian base Concordia, at Dome C, i.e. very close to the Antarctic geomagnetic pole, at about 3200 m above sea level. This makes it the highest geomagnetic latitude radar and the highest altitude radar. Its field of view conjugates with those of the McMurdo radar and the just installed South Pole radar.'

Congratulations to you, Ermanno, and to the build team!

A solo trip was made by Kevin Sterne to the Fort Hays radar site between April 29th and May 3rd, 2013. During this trip, a number of long outstanding issues would be taken care of as well as a pressing matter of boxing up and shipping out all of the leftover pole hardware. This pole hardware included all of the nuts, bolts, and washers necessary for putting the poles together. Other outstanding issues were a complete recalibration and reprogramming of the phasing cards for both radars as well as some other software upgrades.

With the new RBSP mode camgpaign officially 3 months into operations on the SuperDARN radar, a look was taken as to how much time this mode was being run on a few radars. Data was collected using the new CPID Inventory and recording the number of soundings made on a radar for each month. Here the number of soundings doesn't exactly take into account the amount of time the mode was run, but it is a close approximation. The results for this analysis for Blackstone can be seen in the picture to the left.