Calibration of SKALA V2 Antennas for the IceCube-Gen2 Surface Array

The planned IceCube-Gen2 Surface Array will combine multiple detection techniques, such as elevated radio antennas and plastic scintillator panels, to detect cosmic-ray air showers and provide background rejection of atmospheric muons for the in-ice neutrino detector. The calibration and characterization of the SKALA v2 radio antennas, which will detect the electromagnetic component of the air showers, is the focus of this talk. Understanding the performance of the SKALA V2 antennas and the low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) within the antennas is critical for accurately reconstructing the energy of the air shower. The direction-dependent antenna gain of SKALA v2 needs to be known much better than 20% to reach the goal of 10% absolute accuracy of the cosmic ray energy. In a preliminary analysis, we find that the LNAs are sensitive to orientation, with different orientations yielding a difference in gain greater than 10%, indicating that LNA configurations must be accounted for in calibration. We will present a first analysis of calibration measurements and a comparison to a simulated antenna model.