The big news this week was that we thought that there was a new timing problem with the spigot. I spent almost 2 days checking software and then asking Rich and John to check the cabling and the maser to make sure things were OK. Ingrid and I finally tracked the issue to a corrupted time correction file (ut1.dat) in the ~pulsar directory. This is good as it means that none of the actual data from this week are bad, and all the timing is therefore salvageable.

We've finished up spacecraft tracking before the 43m shutdown for upgrades. Reports of data collections have been positive, but there are some bottlenecks on the data reduction side.

Phil Erickson, of Haystack, ran some tests of spacecraft tracking and radar transmissions at 440.2 MHz. The reflections off of the Moon were tremdously bright. Spacecraft reflections were also detected, but could not be seen on our spectrum analyzer.

The 43m tracking will stop for two weeks for installation of a Programmable logic controller that will be used to monitor and control the hydraulic system remotely.

The Lincoln Labs folks will return in February for more electronics and computer systems upgrades.

• Operations
  • PF1 work and L band work
• Projects
  • C band upgrade, 3mm, and Ka band Zpectrometer tap work continues
  • Ka band baseline problems being discussed by a wider audience.
  • Wide dynamic range converter module detectors being tested
  • MLLN tuner designed and costed out

• Any computing items
  • None
• Review of minutes from last meeting
• Review MR's for this cycle
  • None
• Review new list of CurrentObservingReports? requests (not including Astrid requests) and operator log items
  • Numerous Astrid problems
  • Frequency problems
  • L band warmed up -- Associated with Fire problem, but not caused by that
  • Fire died -- Processor heat sink fell off due to improper assembly
  • Spectrometer hanging
  • Turret problems
  • Weather shutdowns
• Sampler logs under some conditions repeatedly generate the name 1858_11_17_00:00:00.fits which can cause name conflicts resulting inability to analyze data using programs such as gbtlogview that depend on accurate naming of the files. Recently discovered, has been occurring off and on for at least six months.
• Other business
  • Discussed the future of the CCC meetings. It seems that the operational fault discussion could take place during Ron's report on Fridays, and we could meet only occassionally to look over MR's. We discussed the fact that often we don't see the MR until it is already being implemented. We will continue as usual for the time being.

• • We received the remaining quotations that we needed to determine the full track replacement cost. We have firm fixed price quotes for more than 99% of the total, and it comes to $5,643,000. Charlottesville is now scraping together all of the cash we can find, and a determination will be made very soon as to how to proceed.
  • This cost was also part of a letter detailing all of the costs to date, and in the future until completion, that will support a warranty claim against Lockheed-Martin. This letter is also in Charlottesville's hands now.

These two deliverables are a big milestone. My thanks to Carol, Christine, Mike Holstine, Harry Morton, Dennis and Art, who all had a piece of these. And, please stop by our bake sale in the lobby.

• • GBT Turrent: The mechanics (without knowing of the problems over the weekend) performed a scheduled quarterly PM on the rollers and track of the turret table. The gear box of the turret mechanism also appears to be a little loose, and we were going to inspect it this morning, until we developed elevator problems. We will do this first available day - which is Monday. (If I'm not at the meeting, I'm looking at this now.)

If it weren't for the weather, this would have been a good week.

We supported 14 projects in 33 observing sessions (maybe a record). Average setup times were low (18 min.) The telescope was also scheduled for 8.5 hrs of maintenance and 7 hrs for software tests.

Lost time was 24 hrs, of which 20 were weather related. That's 16% of the time devoted to observing. About 2.5% was lost to problems not related to the weather. The breakdown of the lost time is:

• Freezing Rain : 13.1 hrs
• Snow storm related : 5.7 hrs
• Winds : 1.4 hrs
• Remote Observer not available : 0.8 hrs
• Astrid/Scan Coordinator : 0.7 hrs
• User script error : 0.5 hrs
• Computing (Vortex) : 0.5 hrs
• Spectrometer : 0.5 hrs
• All others : 0.9 hrs

Last Week
=========

Observations for proposals
   GBT06A-062, GBT04C-050, GBT06A-044, 
   GBT04C-031, GBT05C-010, GBT05C-033, 
   GBT05C-056, GBT05C-014, GBT05C-037, 
   GBT05C-015, GBT05C-004, GBT05B-019, 
   GBT05C-018, GBT01A-005, GBT05C-019

Completed proposals
   GBT05C-014, GBT05C-004, GBT05B-019

Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
  GBT06A-062 [F  ] Jean-Luc Margot
       Venus spin dynamics                               
  GBT05A-041 [  B] Paul Demorest
       Precision Timing of Binary and Millisecond Pulsars
  GBT04C-050 [F  ] Wendy Lane
       Measurement of Variable Redshifted 21cm Absorption
  GBT06A-066 [  B] David Nidever
       HI Mapping of the Extended Magellanic Stream      
  GBT06A-044 [F B] Jeremy Darling
       Intrinsic HI and OH Absorption in Compact Radio   
       Sources at High Redshift                          
  GBT06A-056 [ P ] Paul Kondratko
       Are there Unrecognized NGC4258-like Systems Among 
       Known Water Masers in AGN?                        
  GBT05A-011 [  B] Scott Ransom
       Timing of the Binary and Millisecond Pulsars in   
       Terzan5                                           
  GBT06A-001 [  B] Vincent Fish
       SiH: The Hiding Hydride                           
  GBT04C-031 [ P ] Paul Kondratko
       Monitoring of Five NGC4258-like Water Megamasers  
       Discovered with the GBT and the DSN               
  GBT05C-010 [FPB] Yi-nan Chin
       A Search for Interstellar Benzonitrile (C6H5CN)   
       -- A Key Tracer of Benzene                        
  GBT05B-034 [F  ] Ingrid Stairs
       Timing Binary and Millisecond Pulsars from the    
       Parkes Multibeam Survey                           
  GBT05C-056 [F  ] Paulo Freire
       A GBT S-band Globular Cluster Survey: Phase B     
  GBT05C-057 [F  ] Regina Jorgenson
       Search for 21cm Absorption toward Radio Loud,     
       Extremely Optically Faint Sources                 
  GBT04B-014 [FP ] Paul Kondratko
       Anchoring the Extragalactic Distance Scale        
  GBT05C-015 [ P ] Chris Henkel
       Ammonia in Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies        
  GBT04A-038 [ P ] Brian Mason
       GBT Observations of Radio Sources in CBI          
       Intrinsic Anisotropy Fields                       
  GBT05C-037 [  B] Nissim Kanekar
       Measuring changes in fundamental constants with   
       redshifted OH  lines                              
  GBT06A-009 [ P ] Jim Condon
       H_0 and Dark Energy                               
  BB191      [F  ] Richard Barvainis
        Are Radio-Quiet Quasars Superluminal?            
  GBT05C-019 [F B] Tim Robishaw
       The Galactic Arachnid in the Ursa Major Loop      
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup

Contact Information for 02/09/2006 - 02/23/2006
=======================================
Proposal   PI                 Bands Email [NRAO contact]    
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT06A-062 Jean-Luc Margot    X     jlm@astro.cornell.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06A-030 Don Campbell       S     campbell@astro.cornell.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT05A-041 Paul Demorest      S     demorest@astron.berkeley.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-043 Larry Morgan       L     lmorgan@nrao.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT05B-042 Michael Kramer     L8    mkramer@jb.man.ac.uk [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-022 Jim Braatz         K     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-066 David Nidever      L     dnidever@virginia.edu [Jay Lockman]
GBT06A-001 Vincent Fish       C     vfish@nrao.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06A-046 Glen Langston      U     glangsto@nrao.edu [Glen Langston]
GBT06A-013 Jim Braatz         U     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT04C-031 Paul Kondratko     K     pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-004 William Reach      K     reach@ipac.caltech.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT05C-023 Fernando Camilo    8     fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-049 Tony Readhead      B     acr@astro.caltech.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT05C-046 Ingrid Stairs      L     istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-027 Karen Masters      L     kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GM060      J. McKean          C     mckean@physics.ucdavis.edu []
GBT06A-028 Jack Hewitt        C     j-hewitt@northwestern.edu [Ron Maddalena]
GBT05C-026 Tom Devlin         XQ    devlin@physics.rutgers.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT04A-038 Brian Mason        B     bmason@nrao.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT04A-027 Brian Mason        B     bmason@nrao.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT04A-006 Joel Bregman       Q     jbregman@umich.edu []
GBT06A-009 Jim Condon         K     jcondon@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT01A-005 Barry Turner       Q     bturner@nrao.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT05C-018 Tim Robishaw       L     robishaw@astro.berkeley.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06A-060 Andrew West        L     awest@astro.berkeley.edu [Karen O'Neil]

Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> January   February  March     April     
    Astronomy ~  550 [033] 535 [373] 602 [401] 540 [493] 
  Maintenance ~   55 [009]  29 [051]  23 [077]  16 [102] 
  Test & Comm ~  134 [003] 105 [042] 102 [041] 145 [045] 
  Un-assigned ~    6         4        17        20       

Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
  Active checkout - 1
          On Hold - 23
         Schedule - 77
        Completed - 444


Current backlog [hours prior to 05C*] = 755
   [2001:11(1), 2002:60(1), 2003:19(1), 2004:220(12), 2005:445(17)]
Total time to discharge [hours] = 3461
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 05C

Software Status -- Nicole

Software Status -- Amy

Today ends Week 4 of 6 in the first development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC12006.

Work on the major changes in our infrastructure continues to make progress (moving to a different OS, upgrading the C++ compiler, and upgrading the Python environment). We conducted our first GBT system tests using a Control System that was built with new compiler. Updates to the code base which were necessary to support the compiler updates are complete and checked in to the code repository. The Spectrometer and DCR Managers have been successfully tested on RHE4. The following host computers are now dual-bootable RH9/RHE4 to support version changes between the current release and the next release: earth, fire, and wind. Our primary concern with the deployment of GBT software on the new Red Hat Enterprise OS is the resolution of a bug which generates long delays/timeouts (~15 seconds). We are currently coordinating with Green Bank's Computer Division as well as other sites on the resolution of this problem. Our current hypothesis regarding the delays is that they are a result of a change in the NFS transport from UDP in RH9 to TCP in RHE4. We are working with the Computing Division to get this changed in the GB site configuration in order to test our hypothesis.

Work on the implementation of basic FITS writing in IRC for the Penn Array Backend is progressing well. We performed some sponsor testing this week and updated the Java version to 1.5 (requested by GSFC). We added code to allow the FITS archiver to record cryo temperatures; however the FITS archiving of this data has not been completed. A version of the archiver has been released to Penn and we are awaiting feedback.

The group attended the NRAO-wide video conference on Wednesday, which re-enacted the presentations given to the review panel at the NSF Software Review in September 2005 and presented the findings of the panel.

Operational support items for this week included:

• Investigating the FITS_OPEN warnings from Tim Robishaw's data
• Investigating the hanging of turtle during Tim Robishaw's cal scans

The time spent on the resolution of the RHE4 issues as well as the increased operational support load over the last few weeks will most likely effect the release of some of the MRs for this cycle. Next week, we will more fully evaluate the impact of these bugs on our Februrary release.

Digital Electronics Status 19 Jan 2006 – 26 Jan 2006

***Operations, Problem summary***

Although the following really belongs in the telescope ops report, I’ll put in a few words about the turret locking problem since I brought it up last week. Perhaps Bob can add to it. The circumference of the turret was cleaned this week and this helped it significantly in finding locking positions more readily. Harry Morton planned some follow-up work inside the turret drive pedestal. It would be good if the operators continued to noted any undesirable behavior by the turret both to save wear-and-tear on the mechanism and to increase observing efficiency.

***Development***

Cal-Tech Continuum Backend (CCB):

Work is starting to ramp back up on the CCB backends. Four daughter cards are ready for final testing. Construction of the second Master Card is well under way. Documentation is also being upgraded.

Long Term Accumulator

Work continues at about a 20%FTE level. Detailed timing is being studied on one of the spare LTAs to try to understand why it gets occasional errors.

***Plans***

- Continue CCB construction. - Continue LTA troubleshooting.

%META:TOPICINFO{author="RichardPrestage" date="1138294510" format="1.0" version="1.1"}% %META:TOPICPARENT{name="CommissioningMeetings"}%

GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting

27 January 2006

AGENDA

• Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob
• Observing News -- Ron
• Scheduling Status -- Carl
• Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger
• Digital Electronics Status -- Rich
• Software Status -- Nicole
• Change Control Committee -- John
• Pulsar Related -- Scott
• MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen
• Any other Business

Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob

Observing News -- Ron

Scheduling Status -- Carl

Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger

Digital Electronics Status -- Rich

Software Status -- Nicole

Change Control Committee -- John

Pulsar Related -- Scott

MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen

Any other Business

-- RichardPrestage - 26 Jan 2006