Summary of progress at the Poker Flat Observatory in Alaska

A description of the status of the Poker Flat MST Radar as of early 1983 is included in the 1983 mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere MST Workshop Proceedings. The Observatory continues to operate in a continuous data-taking mode, except for a three-week planned campaign experiment concurrent with the STATE rocket program during June 1983. Construction of the digital preprocessing system mentioned in the last status report is all but complete. This additional improvement should be operational by late summer. The possibility of steering the array also mentioned in the last status report is being investigated. A project is underway to electronically steer the one-quarter vertical section of the array. Steering will be in finite steps within about + or - 5 deg of vertical. Successful testing of this modification may lead to eventually steering the entire array in this manner. Data analysis of the data base (now more than four years in length) continues with well over one dozen extramural scientific groups participating.