33.39 turns solar-grazing planetary radar into a dual-frequency path-court: after explicit 1/f² plasma subtraction plus frozen troposphere, equipment, timebase, and bandpass handling, conjunction-arc residuals must reproduce the same-sign dispersion-free common term τ_common across S, X, and Ka bands, co-occur at zero lag across frequency and station alignments, form a stable solar-elongation or impact-parameter profile, and show repeatable threshold behavior in coronal event windows; under V08/V09-compatible tighten, this remains only a solar-grazing calibration ledger rather than a total propagation, timing, or cosmology verdict.
Use this section as a compact machine-readable EFT reference.
33.39 turns solar-grazing planetary radar into a path-control court. The issue is not whether conjunction arcs are noisy, but whether a dispersion-free τ_common remains after explicit plasma subtraction plus frozen troposphere, equipment, and timebase handling; under compat adjudication, the chapter is tighten.
The readout package includes a common-term index and drift slope from ranging, delay, and Doppler residuals; non-dispersive consistency across S, X, and Ka bands; zero-lag cross-correlations across bands and stations; profile classes over solar elongation or impact-parameter proxies; coronal event threshold response; ratio robustness; and seasonal or cross-target repeatability. A candidate that follows ordinary dispersive scaling is reassigned to the plasma ledger immediately.
Conjunction arcs before and after closest approach are tied to one atomic reference and 1PPS ledger, remapped through a shared bandpass kernel, and processed under explicit troposphere, ionosphere, and coronal subtraction rules. Multiple ephemeris and light-time model families are held out, feed-forward teams use only coronal and atmosphere layers, and dual pipelines plus multiple alignment strategies publish the τ_common tables and stacked profile summaries.
False structure must collapse under frequency-scaling tests, band-edge and sub-band permutations, station-identity swaps, large-elongation reference arcs, time reversal, target and elongation-label permutations, and event-window on/off controls. If the same pattern persists unchanged far from the Sun or stays tied to one site or one sub-band, the claim belongs to medium/equipment ledgers rather than to the common-term court.
The pass line requires at least two independent pipelines, two stations, two targets, and two frequency bands to recover the same dispersion-free τ_common with zero-lag cross-band and cross-station closure, plus a monotonic, plateau-like, or threshold-jump profile that survives model-family, alignment, and masking variants on held-out arcs. Residual dispersive leakage, low-elevation troposphere, equipment group delay, and timestamp queues are the main systematics that must fully absorb the effect before any claim remains.
The chapter ends with one solar-grazing calibration ledger inside the first-line path court, not a total propagation, redshift-delay, or cosmology verdict. If τ_common survives, it sharpens the solar-system calibration edge and routes forward to 33.40; if not, it returns to plasma, atmosphere, equipment, and model-family ledgers.