HBA installation progress — 05-Jul-2011

Here's the day's status update on the installation progress of the KAIRA HBA. Today has been a busy day. Two more lorries arrived with tiles first thing this morning, which put the pressure on for the day. Additionally, there was a lot of work going on with field preparation, ready to accept the first two framesets onto the field.
As you can see, the first two framesets are now in place, located in the westernmost column of the array. Because the deployment is done from a lorry with a HIAB from the second column, we need to be able to deploy the entire first column before we can move on. There is still so much to do!

As you can also see, we've still not managed to get the first tile deployed yet. The delivery of yet more tiles this morning threw us off schedule a little bit, and then we needed to concentrate on getting the frameset deployment and adjustment correct. Although a little frustrating, this is extremely important in order to ensure that the array is correctly set out and installed.

Still, the HBA tile stock is growing. With 16 stored tiles, the southern edge of the site is certainly looking cramped at the moment.

STOP PRESS : Just as we were coming back from the site for dinner, we noted that another delivery lorry had arrived and was waiting in a lay-by shy of of the customs point. That will mean another high-pressure start to the day tomorrow... well, I guess that is no surprise; we knew that this would be the most intense LOFAR build ever.