Figure 1 illustrates the concept of the Large Adaptive Reflector. The concept of the Large Adaptive Reflector. The airborne platform will be at the focus. The focal plane is the - plane. The Zenith Angle of the airborne platform is , and its Azimuth is .
R is the distance from the center of the reflector to the focus.
In principle, R can vary with and , but in this paper the airborne platform is assumed to travel on the surface of a sphere of radius, R. Arrays of LAR's might be used to build very large radio telescopes. We assume that the airborne platform will move over a spherical surface centered on the reflector as shown in Figure 1 . The radius of the sphere, R, is 1000 - 2000 m, depending upon the size of the reflector, the positioning accuracy of the airborne platform, and the amount of panel movement allowed for the reflector. The aerostat will cover all Zenith Angles less than , and all Azimuths. Although helicopters could probably meet most of those requirements, they are very expensive to purchase and to operate.