Completion of a Satellite Antenna Test and Repair Facility Relocation
Authors: Thomas Ondrey, Doug Kremer, Vicki Garcia, Joseph Friedel, Robert Keyser
Publication: AMTA 1999
Copyright Owner: NSI-MI Technologies
The maintenance, test, and repair workload for the Air Force’s AN/MSQ-118 satellite ground-based receiving communication system has been transferred from the closing McClellan Air Force Repair Facility in Sacramento, California to Tobyhanna Army Depot located in Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania. The workload requires the support of four maintenance shops and two planar near-field ranges. The shops are the antenna repair, power supply repair, low-noise amplifier (LNA) repair, and radome repair shops. The near-field ranges are a 4’ x 4’ planar scanner used for antenna diagnostics and an 8’ x 8’ planar scanner used for certification of the repaired antenna-under-test (AUT).
This paper will bring the AMTA community up to date on the status of the new Tobyhanna Antenna Repair Facility, focusing on the techniques and methods used to quantify the alignment and performance characteristics of the planar near-field antenna measurement system used for certification. With the relocation complete, test data obtained at both locations will be analyzed and compared to show differences between the baseline measurements taken at McClellan Air Force Base versus those taken at Tobyhanna Army Depot.