By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

The sunlight shimmers when it hits the seemingly endless rows of white towers and the myriad assortment of wires supporting and linking the towers together.

Soon, that assortment of towers and wires will be sending radar waves into the ionosphere, 60 to 100 miles above the earth.

Work on the two antennas that will be a part of the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network -- SuperDARN -- continues at a fast pace along Golf Course Road southwest of Hays in Ellis County.

Fort Hays State University, due to its location closest to the geographic center of the United States, was approached by Virginia Tech on the East Coast to join a partnership on the giant radar system.

Joining FHSU in getting the SuperDARN installations will be Dartmouth, the University of Alaska and Johns Hopkins.

At the FHSU installation, all of the towers are up and the building that will house the radar system is in place.

They also are working on a link that will let the radar system connect with Tomanek Hall, according to John Heinrichs, chairman of the geosciences department at FHSU.

"I would expect that they will be operational by the end of the year," Heinrichs said.

The entire system, he said, quickly is approaching the time where Virginia Tech will switch it on so it can be calibrated.

That's going to be the key element in the system, getting it calibrated and up and running so data from the radar system can be fed into databases at FHSU and at Virginia Tech. How long that will take is uncertain, and varies by location.

Teams from Virginia have been on site during the course of the construction to help out.

The radar system will be held in place by a series of towers -- 36 of them 30 feet tall and another 36 20 feet tall, Heinrichs said.

Because of its geographic location, Fort Hays actually will operate two such systems, including sending out signals to the northwest and northeast.

The two systems will take ionosphere readings somewhere over Canada, Heinrichs said.

The radar systems will operate much like the Doppler radar systems used by the National Weather Service, other than they are much larger and send signals greater distances.

The installations, Heinrichs said, are coming at a low point in the 22-year solar cycle, a point where there's little sunspot activity.

But that will allow researchers to watch as sunspots increase and determine the full effect on the ionosphere.