Operation and performance of a pilot HELYCON cosmic ray telescope with 3 stations

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Three autonomous HELYCON stations have been installed, calibrated and operated at the Hellenic Open University campus, detecting cosmic ray air showers. A software package for the detailed simulation of the detectors' response and the stations' operation has been developed. In this work we present the results of the analysis of the data collected by the stations during a period of one year and a half. The performance of the telescope is compared and found in very good agreement with the predictions of the simulation package. The angular resolution of each autonomous station is 3 to 5 degrees depending on the station geometry. In addition, by analyzing data from showers detected synchronously by more than one station, we evaluate the performance of the telescope in detecting very high energy (E > 5PeV) cosmic rays.