ARM Radar Technician Training Course at the ARM SGP Site

 
Published: 26 October 2015

Editor’s note: Joseph Hardin, a radar engineer at the ARM Climate Research Facility, sent this update

Chris Martin and Matt Gibson working to measure a signal on the top of an X-SAPR radar.
Training attendees Chris Martin and Matt Gibson working to measure a signal on the top of an X-SAPR radar.

The ARM Climate Research Facility currently operates 33 radars spread over 6 sites that stretch around the world, from Antarctica to the Arctic. These radars must operate continuously in some of the most challenging environments, all while providing high quality data to support scientific activities.

Maintaining and upgrading this number of radars is challenging for the four ARM radar engineers in the Radar Engineering and Operations Group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. But, we don’t do this work alone thanks to a mix of radar technicians and site support staff!

During the third week of September, the engineer staff held an intensive seven-day training course at the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) Central Facility located in Oklahoma, for the site support and radar technicians.

This course covered a good mix of theory and practice. The topics ranged from system administration and maintenance of the many computer systems to diagnosis and replacement of the various radar sub-systems. The hands-on work had the technicians practicing to diagnose actual errors on the radars and fix them while on site under the tutelage of the radar mentors.

Courses like this ensure that site staff has the training needed to accurately detect and correct deviations from normal radar operational states.

This course was very helpful and is just one of the many things the ARM Facility does to ensure that scientific users receive the highest quality data.