Speaker
Description
Radio emissions of extensive air showers can be observed with the AugerPrime radio detector (RD) at the Pierre Auger Observatory. As part of the AugerPrime upgrade, RD has been installed on $1660$ water-Cherenkov detectors on an area of roughly $3000 \text{ km}^2$ and consists of dual-polarized Short Aperiodic Loaded Loop Antennas (SALLA). To achieve high measurement precision, the SALLA must be well calibrated, which requires the antenna response pattern to be well known. Here, we introduce a direction-dependent relative calibration using a well-defined biconical antenna mounted to a drone. The drone-based setup possesses active stabilization and precise aiming with the use of a gimbal. Additionally, the position of the drone is tracked using differential GPS with a precision of up to $1$ cm. This setup allows us to precisely extract the antenna response pattern from any arrival direction. In an in-situ campaign in November 2023, calibration measurements of the RD were performed. Building on that experience, a second calibration campaign was carried out in March 2026 with an improved setup and procedure. A novel approach based on Information Field Theory is implemented to reconstruct the full antenna response pattern across all arrival directions and frequencies from a set of sparse measurements. First results of the full antenna response pattern are presented.