During this educational deployment, EAPS took advantage of its close relationship with the Purdue Agronomy department to obtain facilities and deployment sites for the DOW. When not in use, the DOW was housed in the phenomics tool development high bay of the Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center (ICSC), a Purdue-owned agronomical research facility. This large indoor space was not in heavy demand during February and March, because this time period fell outside the region’s growing season. Use of the high bay allowed CSWR staff to work on the DOW in a comfortable indoor environment during the cold Indiana weather (Fig. 2).

The ICSC is part of the Agronomy Center for Research and Education (ACRE), a Purdue field research station located about 4 miles from Purdue’s main campus. The ACRE site proved a convenient test deployment site for the DOW, as it is located on 1,400+ acres (5.7 km2) of relatively flat terrain. Nearby clutter targets like high-tension power lines and wind turbines provided opportunities to demonstrate concepts like ground clutter mapping and atmospheric refraction (Fig. 3). Unless otherwise noted, all atmospheric observations by the DOW during this educational deployment were conducted from ACRE. Training deployments occurred at ACRE from 26 February through 6 March. During these training sessions, CSWR staff members instructed the PI, the four Radar Meteorology students, and one undergraduate independent study student on the operation of the DOW. In some instances, Intensive Observing Periods (IOPs) for the class experiments doubled as training deployments for the students.