'Starya Pustin', a historical radio-physical polygon of NIRFI and its potential for a 32 m radio telescope antenna for VLBI

The paper describes in outline format some historical achievements as obtained with different radio telescope antennas built at Staraya Pustin, and describes some of the current developments. The Radio-physical Research Institute (RRI or NIRFI in Russian) at Nizhny Novgorod is responsible for the Staraya Pustin facility. The main subject of the paper is a description of the possibility of constructing at this facility a 32 m radio telescope antenna, suitable for very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) and stand-alone radio astronomy. Similar 32 m radio telescope antennas have been realised already at Svetloe (near St. Petersburg), Zelenchukskaya (North Caucasus) and Badary (near Irkutsk).