Check the value of for each receiver used. If the weather is
reasonably good, make a skydip (OBS
SKYDIP command) to
measure the forward efficiency. In case of scattered clouds, you may prefer
to rely on the preceding measurements of this parameter. In any case, the
knowledge of the image band gain ratio,
, is essential. This is
mostly a scale factor when signal and image opacities are similar, but this
is not entirely true close to strong atmospheric absorption bands (e.g. at
115 GHz).
The observing strategy then depends on the weather and (or) receiver stability. Under good conditions (stable weather), you may calibrate with a CAL COLD from time to time, and use the derived value of the water vapor content for intermediate calibrations with a simple CAL AUTO. If the weather is not stable, but the receiver is, use a CAL TREC instead of the CAL AUTO. CAL COLD is always best since you can monitor both water vapor and receiver fluctuations.
Do not forget to focus (OBSFOCUS command) the telescope
for the receiver you are most interested in. Otherwise, the standard value
of the beam efficiency will be wrong.