Top left: Rendered side view of PLASTIC (cut in half). The entrance of the top hat of the cylindrical sensor is separated into two parts: The solar wind sector (SWS), and the wide-angle partition. Within the top hat, the electrostatic analyser is housed. In the lower parts of the instrument, the time-of-flight chamber and an solid state detector (SSD) are found. An example trajectory that enters the tophat is plotted in turquoise. Top right: Superimposed top-view cross-sections of PLASTIC. At the top, the entrance system is visible. At lower layers, the resistive anode and solid-state detectors are found. In purple we show the resistive anode channels, corresponding to the incident directions from the SWS aperture on the opposite side of the instrument. Bottom: Histograms of PLASTIC pulse-height analysis data from 2009. The left histogram shows the SSD energy channel as a function of the time-of-flight channel, wherein only events contribute that occur during energy-per-charge step 44. The dashed grey line shows the expected positions of He⁺ and He²⁺ for all energy-per-charge steps. The right histogram shows the energy-per-charge step as a function of time-of-flight channel. The dashed white line shows the expected average position of He⁺. The right histogram is normalised to individual maxima of time-of-flight slices.