VLA Visit

Picture 3: The antennas are moved by a diesel powered dolly on a double set of railroad tracks, then are set down on concrete pillars. The array is Y-shaped. The antennas may be arranged closely together to be all within 0.6 km of the center or stretched out to be 21 km from the center. Down-converted signals are sent to the control buildings through buried waveguide. The waveguide also sends control signals out to the antennas. One of the proposed updates would be to replace the waveguide with optical fiber.




















Picture 4: This is the view peeking up through the main reflector at the second reflector. This thing reflects the signal back down to the receiver feed horns which ring the center of the big reflector, and through waveguide down to the racks just below, such as those shown in pictures 3, 6, and 8.





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