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Today's ADAP shows some of the environmental monitoring equipment at the
Australia Telescope Compact Array. On top of the Control Building is an
anemometer to measure wind speed and direction -- when wind gusts exceed
set limits the antennas are automatically stowed. (And the ATCA has some
redundnacy for this important task, with another anemometer is located on site
to ensure back-up if one or other develops problems.) The other equipment
monitors the radio frequency environment. The monitor consists
of three elements to provide a very wide frequency coverage: the spiky
discone antenna provides 360-degree monitoring, whereas the
arrow-shaped wedge antenna and
Loop antenna provide more directional monitoring, and are mounted on
a pole that rotates through 360 degrees over the course of 20 minutes
and provides information on the local radio-frequency interference (RFI)
environment over the ATCA's 16cm (1.1 to 3.1 GHz) observing band.
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