HiCal 2: An instrument designed for calibration of the ANITA experiment and for Antarctic surface reflectivity measurements

• Main Authors: Prohira, S., Novikov, A., Besson, D. Z., Ratzlaff, K., Stockham, J., Stockham, M., Clem, J. M., Young, R., Gorham, P. W., Allison, P., Banerjee, O., Batten, L., Beatty, J. J., Belov, K., Binns, W. R., Bugaev, V., Cao, P., Chen, C., Chen, P., Connolly, A., Cremonesi, L., Dailey, B., Deaconu, C., Dowkontt, P. F., Fox, B. D., Gordon, J., Hast, C., Hill, B., Hupe, R., Israel, M. H., Kowalski, J., Lam, J., Learned, J. G., Liewer, K. M., Liu, T. C., Ludwig, A., Matsuno, S., Miki, C., Mottram, M., Mulrey, K., Nam, J., Nichol, R. J., Oberla, E., Rauch, B. F., Roberts, J., Romero-Wolf, A., Rotter, B., Russell, J., Saltzberg, D., Schoorlemmer, H., Seckel, D., Stafford, S., Strutt, B., Tatem, K., Varner, G. S., Vieregg, A. G., Wissel, S. A., Wu, F.
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2017
• Subjects: Instrumentation and Detectors physics.ins-det; FOS Physical sciences; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1710.11175; https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.11175

The NASA supported High-Altitude Calibration (HiCal)-2 instrument flew as a companion balloon to the ANITA-4 experiment in December 2016. Based on a HV discharge pulser producing radio-frequency (RF) calibration pulses, HiCal-2 comprised two payloads, which flew for a combined 18 days, covering 1.5 revolutions of the Antarctic continent. ANITA-4 captured over 10,000 pulses from HiCal, both direct and reflected from the surface, at distances varying from 100-800 km, providing a large dataset for surface reflectivity measurements. Herein we present details on the design, construction and performance of HiCal-2. : Published in NIM-A, final version