Introduction
If you're reading these pages, it's hopefully because you want to start working with EISCAT data, but don't have a clue where to begin. You might be a new postgraduate student at the start of a PhD programme, or a more experienced researcher who has not been involved with EISCAT data in the past. Whatever your level, these pages are intended to provide a painless introduction to the ways in which you can work with EISCAT data using the computers at RAL.
As you probably already know, the UK EISCAT Support Group offers a login-based computing service for all UK EISCAT users, based on a cluster of unix machines. Registration is free for all bona fide UK researchers, and indeed our service is also open to non-UK EISCAT users, subject to the caveat that we cannot necessarily promise them the same level of support as we give to the UK community.
Our aim is to make the service as well-documented and easy to use as possible; however this may not always be achievable. We are aware that some people regard EISCAT as being very a complicated system to work with - but this is not really the case. The data themselves are actually fairly simple - the problem is that, because incoherent scatter is such a flexible technique, there are many different ways of working with the data and hence a lot of detail to remember.
These pages aim to present the basic picture as simply as possible. If you get stuck, however, the last section tells you who to contact and how to submit requests for help. It also tells you about the training courses that are on offer for those people who want to get to know EISCAT in a little more depth.
However, these pages are not intended to teach you everything you need to work with EISCAT. We are assuming that you already have some level of knowledge before you start. See the next section for a summary of the things you should already know.