{"id":420,"date":"2008-07-05T18:31:08","date_gmt":"2008-07-05T18:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doctorross.co.za\/?p=420"},"modified":"2008-07-09T13:35:09","modified_gmt":"2008-07-09T13:35:09","slug":"disaster-strikes-hf-radar-research-programme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Disaster strikes HF Radar research programme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The recent winds did more than just topple weather records &#8211; today we discovered the wind had also flattened all but one of the towers which support the HF radar antenna.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/hfradar.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-422\" title=\"SANAE IV\\'s HF radar before it was destroyed by strong winds\" src=\"http:\/\/www.doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/hfradar.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/hfradar.jpg 800w, https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/hfradar-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>SANAE IV&#8217;s HF radar (pictured in the photo above, taken last summer) is the largest of the scientific research installations at Vesleskarvet.\u00c2\u00a0 16 T-shaped towers stood 15m high in an east-west line more than 200m long, supporting a grid of aluminium antenna elements which collectively transmit and receive signals allowing scientists to study the upper atmosphere over the South Pole.\u00c2\u00a0 Our radar is part of a network of similar stations all around Antarctica\u00c2\u00a0 which contribute data to create three-dimensional images (eg. of the ionosphere over the Pole) which is then fed to collaborative groups of scientists around the world (the SHARE and SuperDARN projects).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/flattened-hf-radar.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-421\" title=\"The fallen HF radar\" src=\"http:\/\/www.doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/flattened-hf-radar.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/flattened-hf-radar.jpg 800w, https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/flattened-hf-radar-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The same hurricane-force winds which damaged my tent caused failure of one of the anchors of the radar, causing 15 of the 16 towers to fall like dominoes.\u00c2\u00a0 The damage is beyond our facilities and supplies to repair; a full-blown reconstruction will have to take place in summer.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, there is a silver lining:\u00c2\u00a0 reconstructing the radar allows changes and upgrades to the design to be implemented.\u00c2\u00a0 Antarctica might be the most challenging earth-bound location to conduct scientific investigation, but she is still an awesome laboratory and window on the universe.\u00c2\u00a0 Besides &#8211; if it were easy, it wouldn&#8217;t be fun.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.doctorross.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/sanae-hf-radar.kmz\">SANAE HF Radar on Google Earth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent winds did more than just topple weather records &#8211; today we discovered the wind had also flattened all but one of the towers which support the HF radar antenna. SANAE IV&#8217;s HF radar (pictured in the photo above, taken last summer) is the largest of the scientific research installations at Vesleskarvet.\u00c2\u00a0 16 T-shaped [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antarctic-science","category-antarctica","category-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctorross.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}