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This ends Week 5 of 6 in the fourth development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC42006. Integration testing is scheduled for Monday and Wednesday of next week. Regression tests are scheduled for Sunday, June 25. We plan to release M&C v6.4 on Wednesday, June 28. Release notes will be forthcoming.
Operational support was light for this week.
We attended a Zpectrometer meeting this week. In general, things are looking good. We spent a great deal of time in the meeting talking about software - specifically, the M&C Manager and GBTIDL/SDFITS data reduction requirements. As of this meeting, our schedule has slipped such that delivery of the Zpectrometer to Green Bank will occur around the first week in September.
We spent a lot of time this week reviewing and interviewing candidates for our open software position. Because the wiki is public, I will include no further details in this report but I will be happy to give an update at the meeting.
We are currently developing a project charter for balancing. The motivation for this project charter is to ensure that the individual balancing MRs conform to the overarching plan for balancing. The draft project charter is finished and under internal SDD review. We will then present the revised draft to the balancing sponsor, FrankGhigo. After getting Frank's nod of approval, we will present it for consideration to the CCC. It is important to handle our implementation of balancing carefully as it affects many parts of the system.
There is an item which requires some discussion. Last night, we got a call from Donna. She was concerned that the weather information in the CLEO antenna screen was not updating during a pulsar observation. Currently, the antenna updates the weather information used for refraction once at the beginning of each scan. (Actually the weather information is updated periodically, but not sent to the refraction model except at the scan start.) This could possibly be detrimental for very long scans which require up-to-date refraction information. We don't need to solve this problem at the meeting, per se, but we need to determine what (if anything) should be done in some forum.
Summary of Cycle 4 MRs:
- MRs ready for sponsor testing:
- MRs with sponsor approval:
- Create Linux Quadrant Detector Manager (ModificationRequest9C306)(CCC approved)
- This will not be released this cycle. Work is almost complete. However, we will need to allocate some of Ray's time next cycle to finish. Currently, the Manager compiles and links, with new GDAQ library. We still need to add more parameters and samplers having to do with the DT-50 (heater/defroster). Summary of work remaining: DT-50 library, finish DDL, testing.
- Allow Saving of Invalid Scheduling Blocks (ModificationRequest4C805)(CCC approved)
- Because the LST MR (mentioned above) took longer than expected. The work associated with this MR will not be released this cycle.
- Implement CCB Self-Test (ModificationRequest10C306) (CCC approved)
- Software Fix for Spectrometer "Bad Lags" (ModificationRequest15C306) (Pending CCC approval)
- Balancing Project:
- MRs being written:
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There have been a ton of Spigot observations in the last couple weeks, but now that I've gotten most of the observers to use some new software that I've written to convert 16-bit lags to 8-bit spectra (and for S-band data, to automatically chuck the bad 200MHz). That decreases the data volume by a factor of 2-3 and makes dealing with it significantly easier (the processing and backups go much quicker).
I've been talking to many people and building support for the next-generation GBT pulsar machine. There is lots of interest from UBC (Stairs), WVU (Lorimer/McLaughlin), DRAO, and possibly others. It would help if NRAO could hire a hot young digital engineer (with lots of DSP and FPGA experience)... For dollars, WVU and I will likely submit an NSF grant in the fall.
Finally, I got lots of good feedback about the AAS GBT pulsars talk -- I think a lot of people were impressed with what the telescope has done. And on a related note, the magnetar paper was accepted by Nature 2 days ago (Thanks to all for the high frequency support and for helping us to get on the telescope so quickly).
Next week I'll be at the Chandra proposal review in Boston for most of the week and expect to get nothing useful accomplished.