We report the performance of the 13.7-meter Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory (TRAO) radio telescope. The telescope has been equipped with a new receiver, SEQUOIA-TRAO, a new backend system, FFT2G, and a new VxWorks operating system. The receiver system features a 16-pixel focal plane array using high-performance MMIC preamplifiers; it shows very low system noise levels, with system noise temperatures from 150 K to 450 K at frequencies from 86 to 115 GHz. With the new backend system, we can simultaneously obtain 32 spectra, each with a velocity coverage of 163 km s−1 and a resolution of 0.04 km s−1 at 115 GHz. The new operating system, VxWorks, has successfully handled the LMTMC-TRAO observing software. The main observing method is the on-the-fly (OTF) mapping mode; a position-switching mode is available for small-area observations. Remote observing is provided. The antenna surface has been newly adjusted using digital photogrammetry, achieving a rms surface accuracy better than 130 µm. The pointing uncertainty is found to be less than 5'' over the entire sky. We tested the new receiver system with multi-frequency observations in OTF mode. The aperture efficiencies are 43±1%, 42±1%, 37±1%, and 33±1%, the beam efficiencies are 45±2%, 48±2%, 46±2%, and 41±2% at 86, 98, 110, and 115 GHz, respectively.
We carry out 100-GHz band test observations with the newly-constructed KVN 21-m radio telescopes in order to evaluate their performance. The three telescopes have similar performance parameters. The pointing accuracies are about 4" rms for the entire sky. The main beam sizes are about 30" (FWHMs), which is nearly the diffraction limit of the telescopes at the observing frequency (97 GHz). The measured aperture and main-beam efficiencies are about 52% and 46%, respectively, for all three telescopes. The estimated moon efficiency is ~84% for the KVN Tamna telescope. The first sidelobes appear 50" (~1.6 xFWHM) from the main beam centers and the levels are on average -14 dB.