BALTICS LOFAR training

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In April, two Latvian VIRAC engineers Marcis Bleiders and Marcis Donerblicks started with a four-week LOFAR training. After a general introduction we went to Amsterdam for a two-day ILT face-to-face meeting. They met other station-owners and listened to their experiences with operating a LOFAR station, and doing science with it.

The second week we payed a maintenance visit to Norderstedt station DE609. Hamburg engineer Nils Boehmer was our host and served good coffee in his mobile home. As can be seen from the pictures, they also did a RFI monitoring campaign. The measurement was repeated at the LOFAR core and will also be executed at the prospective LOFAR site Irbene in Letvia.

The final two weeks they spent on the HBA-PC. The hardware and software were developed by three students of the Hanzehogeschool Groningen. Marcis and Marcis implemented a full beam-steering code for an HBA analog tile, and also created a read-back function for all sixteen HBA-FE element delay settings.

They enjoyed the training and we look forward to seeing them back in the future. Thanks guys, for the fruitful engineering staff exchange.