The Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos (BEACON) is a novel detector concept
consisting of many radio interferometers placed on mountaintops, searching for the radio emission
of upgoing extensive air showers created when ultrahigh energy tau neutrinos skim the Earth.
The BEACON prototype is located at the White Mountain Research Station in California at an
elevation of 3.8 km and has been operating since 2018. It consists of a phased array of 4 custom,
crossed-dipole antennas with a 30-80 MHz bandwidth. The prototype has demonstrated the ability
to trigger on impulsive RF events in the presence of background noise, with at least one such event
likely being a cosmic ray. The threshold of the prototype can be validated by a measurement of
the cosmic ray flux, allowing us to better predict the sensitivity of a full-size BEACON to tau
neutrinos. We discuss the goals of the BEACON concept, the status of the prototype, and an
ongoing cosmic ray search which utilizes a convolutional neural network trained on simulated
cosmic ray waveforms.