Beam setup of a LOTAAS pointing. Panel a: LOTAAS pointing consists of three sub-array pointings (SAPs) separated by on the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Within each SAP, the LOFAR correlator and beamformer forms 61 coherently summed tied-array beams (TABs; small circles) and an incoherent beam (large circle). The TABs are hexagonally tiled to cover the centre of each SAP. Within each SAP an additional 12 TABs are formed, and can be pointed towards known pulsars (shown here only for one SAP). The SAP full-width at half maximum (FWHM) varies from 61 to 47 over the LOTAAS band (119 MHz to 151 MHz). Panel b: hexagonal tiling of the 61 TABs within a single SAP. The TAB FWHM varies from 041 to 032 over the LOTAAS band (119 MHz to 151 MHz). Adjacent TABs overlap by 28% at 119 MHz and 14% at 151 MHz. Panel c: LOTAAS pointings are tessellated in three passes, as indicated. Three passes are required to cover the sky with TABs, while each single pass covers the sky with incoherent beams from the SAPs.