LFAA AAVS1 concrete bases - site arrival

© ICRAR/Curtin

The Local Infrastructure work package (LINFRA, lead: ICRAR/Curtin) of the SKA Low Frequency Aperture Array (LFAA) has been making impressive progress. This daily image reports on the arrival of the concrete bases.

After site clearing, power and fibre deployment and groundplane deployment, the next step into realising the AAVS1 stations, is the deployment of the concrete bases.

The concrete bases will host the log-periodic antennas, making sure the antennas will remain at their position, facing the severe weather conditions at the MRO.

Especially items like wind load, including wind gusts, are quite a challenge, from a design point of view.

Time will tell whether this solution is the correct way towards SKA1_LOW.

As we are working towards the AADC CDR, several other options will also be investigated and reported upon.