Murchison Widefield Array Field Trip, August 2008

Tasks undertaken included:

1. Layout the new 24 cables from MWA Hut to tiles
2. Check out / modify the cable feedthrough into RFI enclosure at MWA Hut
3. Layout the optical fibre from the MWA Hut to the ATNF Site Office
4. Set up two of the GPS TEC systems (one at MRO and one at Homestead)
5. Met up on-site with an electrician and aircon tradesman to review the plan for the rewired (3 phase) / upgraded aircon for the MWA Hut
6. Familiarised with the monitor and control facilities/requirements that we seek to have progressively implemented in the near future (eg system remote start up, fuel, level monitor, powering up aircon and MWA electronic racks...)
7. Survey (approx) the flatness of the site for the MWA 12 m transportable and appropriately mark the location
8. "Dressed" a number of tiles (laid out antenna cabling and cable tied to ground plane) ready for future connection to beamformers)
9. Cleaned up site

Bruce Stansby at the 10km mark. Seen here conferring with a largely hidden Mervyn Lynch.

The Cable Team (David Basden, Jamie Stevens and Bruce Stansby) laying the 235kg of fibre optic cable from the site office to the centre of the MWA.

Coaxial cable bundles ready for deployment.

A coaxial cable drum 'loaded up'....

....and ready for transport to the centre of the array

Slowly does it

The beginning and....

...the end

GPS TEC system up and running

Images: David Herne, Curtin University