we don't record phase, there is no way to recover the phase from a single signal what we do we make sure that all receivers are synchronized, i.e take samples

we don't record phase, there is no way to recover the phase from a single signal what we do we make sure that all receivers are synchronized, i.e take samples at the exact same time then you can correlate the signal received between dishes (which will arrive at different times due to delays in propagation), and find out the time difference of the signal which then points out to signal origin (beam forming) - this is how phased radar works once you align the signals you can use the minute differences in the signals to compute a synthetic aperture, i.e improving the angular resolution