Observing tips #1 — Introduction

There are three main observing modes for LOFAR stations:

• Network mode — where the station is controlled from Dwingeloo as part of the overall LOFAR network.
• Single-station mode —  when the station is controlled from Dwingeloo, but not as part of the network.
• Stand-alone mode — when the station is controlled completely locally.

For KAIRA, this will mostly be in stand-alone mode. As a result we will be doing a lot of observing and will gain a lot of experience with using the LOFAR systems directly.

We've noticed that as we've been doing our work we've picked up some useful tips that would apply to any of  the other LOFAR international stations. These are mostly command-line tricks that can be used on the local control unit, but also for some of the other data processing aspects of the system. Hopefully these will be of use to other LOFAR users and even other scientists running their own experiments, even on other equipment. And, for our general readers, it will give a small glimpse of some of the strange commands that we use to interact with our experiments.

We shall be occasionally interspersing these amongst the photographs and results that we post here. Watch out for them, or search for them all with the observing tips label.