Last week the ECHO team took the (relatively) short drive from Tempe up to Prescott, Arizona and Embry Riddle Aeronautical University to do some more testing at a new location. The Embry-Riddle Physics department has put together a very nice campus observatory which is predominantly devoted to radio science, both astronomy and aerospace. Under the leadership of Professor Andri Gretarsson, they have set up a set of three MWA tiles with which they plan to observe pulsars, and antenna elements from LWA and from LOFAR. On this trip we got shown around the site, made a preliminary map of one MWA tile, and discussed plans in the works to build a HERA dish.
We only had a few hours in the afternoon to map the tile, so we hurried through three sorties and hoped for the best. Getting home and processing the data we were pleased to see the expected square sidelobe pattern (shown below). The errors are still a bit high due to a low sample count, so we’ll be heading back up as soon as we can to get more data.
