In the frame of the SKADS activities, efforts have been devoted to the design of a test bed (BEST-Basic Element for SKA Training), composed of low cost, high performance receivers, optical links and a fast low power consumptive modular back end. Such a prototype is characterised by a geometrical collecting area of about 1400 m 2 and exploits some cylindrical concentrators, mechanically modified, of the large Northern Cross array. These modifications were required in order to host both the new

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... ont ends on the focal lines and the optical links (to transport the analogue signals to the processing room) on the antenna structures. The architecture chosen for the BEST pathfinders is a standard single conversion receiver. A low frequency (120-240 MHz) prototype has been prepared and named BEST-3lo. Some preliminary astronomical observation tests on CAS-A was performed with promising results with both the UHF(BEST-2) and VHF(BEST-3lo) prototypes.