A cosmic ray search with the prototype for the Beamforming Elevated Array for COsmic Neutrinos
(BEACON) helps characterize the BEACON instrument, including the RF trigger that is ultimately
crucial for detecting tau-neutrino induced geomagnetic emission with this mountaintop array. The
well-studied cosmic ray flux allows us to quantify the detector’s performance and discrimination
against backgrounds. Detection and characterization of a well-understood population of cosmic-
ray events seen by the detector can be used to optimize the RF trigger on a full-scale BEACON
experiment. Presented here are the preliminary results of a cosmic ray search using the 2021
detector, and the motivation for a detector upgrade in October 2023. These detector upgrades
introduced a new antenna design, new modular data acquisition hardware, and an independent
scintillator array detector. The scintillator array provides an independent detection of cosmic rays,
yielding a sample of cosmic ray events with coincident RF triggers to characterize the RF trigger.
The progress for a cosmic ray search with the 2023 detector using coincident scintillator and RF
signals is presented.