History of EISCAT – Part 1: On the early history of EISCAT with special reference to the Swedish part of it

Abstract

Abstract. The paper describes the early history of EISCAT, from the very first ideas and Nordic contacts in the late 1960s to the end of the main development phase, when the facility had become a very advanced and reliable research instrument and its users had developed full competence in the second half of the 1980s. The preparation of the "Green Book", the Beynon meeting in London in 1973 and the activities started there, the first EISCAT Council meeting, the "technical period" 1976-1981, the inauguration in 1981 and the decade of improvements in most of the 1980s are described as seen from the Swedish point of view.

History of EISCAT – Part 3: The early history of EISCAT in Norway

“…Bengt Hultqvist was there, and presented our plans, proposing that the General Assembly should adopt a resolution supporting the plan. This was indeed done, but the Assembly also supported the French project mentioned above, so we did not feel that we had made much progress (Hultqvist, 2011).…”

“…The scientists, though, kept on with the technical discussions. Hultquist invited us to a meeting in Stockholm in September 1970, in order to obtain an agreement on the gross specifications of the radar system (Hultqvist, 2011). By that time, the French project for a shipborn radar had been cancelled, and the scientists behind the project were interested in working with us on an auroral zone radar.…”

“…I went to Oulu together with Arne Haug from the Auroral Observatory, Hultqvist came from Kiruna, and Oksman was joined by Tiuri, Kataja and Koivumaa from Finland. Bengt had in advance prepared a draft for a proposal (or agreement), which was indeed very helpful (Hultqvist, 2011). After a day and a half we agreed on a proposal.…”

“…The prototype is described by Alker in an EISCAT technical note (Alker, 1979). Terrance Ho made valuable contributions to the programming of the correlator (Ho and Alker, 1981).…”

How the Saint Santin incoherent scatter system paved the way for a French involvement in EISCAT

“…In this context the idea to embark a radar on a ship was born. The suggested configuration was a monostatic radar, with pointing ability in order to keep the 3-D wind measurement capability demonstrated at Saint Santin (Waldteufel, 1968 Hultqvist, 2011) and the French ship project where both supported by the 1969 URSI General Assembly, several factors would concur to the merging of the two projects. While many teams across the world expressed interest in the ship borne incoherent scatter concept, a major difficulty arose about the cost (both investment and running), heavily increased by the ship's logistics.…”