 The main aim for the telescope when constructed was to use it in conjunction with the Lovell Telescope as a fully steerable interferometer to determine the sizes of radio sources.It was not known what size the radio sources would be, and so the optimal telescope separation was not known (the separation is inversely proportional to the resolution of the interferometer).As a result, the telescope was built such that it could be completely disassembled and reassembled on a new site within 6 months.