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GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting

04 Aug 2006

AGENDA

Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob

Observing News -- Ron

We supported 9 projects in 25 observing sessions including a VLB run. This is the lowest number of projects we've run in a long time. Average setup time was 9 min, the lowest ever. The telescope was also scheduled for 42 hrs of maintenance. We had 1.5 hrs of lost time, about 1% of the time scheduled for observing. Of the 14 operator shifts, only 4 had problems and 4 had no-lost-time (NLT) problems. The operator's logs report that lost time came from:

The NLT problems came from:

We're working on a policy/best practices document for how one uses IDL licenses as well as trying to better distribute licenses. We also had a report about a large focus offset and one case where the Spectrometer mysteriously set itself up for 3-level sampling when previous uses of the same scripts provided 9-level sampling.

Scheduling Status -- Carl 

Last Week
=========

Observations for proposals
   GBT06B-030, GBT06B-020, GBT06B-021, 
   BU031     , GBT06B-012, GBT06B-013, 
   GBT05C-023, GBT06B-016, GBT06B-019

Completed proposals
   GBT06B-016

Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
  GBT06B-040 [F  ] Nissim Kanekar
       A Targeted High Frequency Search for Pulsars at   
       the Galactic Center                               
  GBT06A-053 [F  ] Scott Ransom
       Continued Timing of the Binary and Millisecond    
       Pulsars in Terzan 5                               
  GBT06B-052 [F  ] Min Yun
       21cm HI Absorption and Emission in a Nearby Galaxy
  GBT06B-020 [F  ] Karen O'Neil
       HI in Galaxies and Environments                   
  GBT06A-054 [F  ] Paul Demorest
       Long-term Precision Timing of Millisecond Pulsars 
  GBT06B-021 [F B] Karen Masters
       Mapping Matter in the Nearby Universe with 2MASS  
  GBT05C-042 [F  ] Scott Ransom
       Timing the Binary and Millisecond Pulsars in      
       NGC6440 and NGC6441                               
  GBT02A-053 [F  ] Carl Heiles
       Magnetic fields in Photodissociation regions from 
       Zeeman splitting of Carbon Recombination Lines    
  BU031      [F  ] Jim Ulvestad
       A Search for Young Supernovae in the Antennae     
       Galaxies                                          
  GBT06A-046 [F B] Glen Langston
       A search for the Largest Interstellar Molecule,   
       HC_13N                                            
  GBT06A-013 [ P ] Jim Braatz
       Finding Signatures of a Maser Disk in a Quasar at 
       z=0.66                                            
  GBT06B-012 [F  ] Loris Magnani
       OH Observations of the Envelope of MBM 40         
  GBT06A-014 [ P ] Andrea Tarchi
       H2O vs Continuum in the Megamaser 3C403:          
       Reverberation Mapping of the Nucleus              
  GBT06B-013 [F  ] Tyler Foster
       CTB 102: The Largest HII Region in the Galaxy?    
  GBT06A-004 [ P ] Bill Reach
       Water Masers from Protostars in IC 1396A          
  GBT05C-046 [F  ] Ingrid Stairs
       Timing of a Relativistic Binary and other Pulsars 
       from the Arecibo PALFA Survey                     
  GBT06B-026 [F  ] Julia Deneva
       Searching for Pulsars and Transient Sources in    
       the Galactic Center                               
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup

Contact Information for 08/17/2006 - 08/31/2006
=======================================
Proposal   PI                 Bands Email [NRAO contact]    
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
BF088      Vincent Fish       L     vfish@nrao.edu []
GBT06B-053 Min Yun            L     myun@astro.umass.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-021 Karen Masters      L     kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06B-011 David Champion     3     champion@physics.mcgill.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-033 Jason Hessels      3     hessels@physics.mcgill.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-044 Robert Ferdman     L     ferdman@phas.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-034 Jacqueline van Gor L     jvangork@astro.columbia.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06B-024 Jeff Mangum        K     jmangum@nrao.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06B-013 Tyler Foster       C     Tyler.Foster@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca [Dana Balser]
GBT05C-023 Fernando Camilo    8     fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-025 Maura McLaughlin   3     maura.mclaughlin@mail.wvu.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-026 Julia Deneva       XC    deneva@astro.cornell.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-018 Michael Kramer     8     mkramer@jb.man.ac.uk [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-019 Toney Minter       L     tminter@nrao.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-009 Joe Helmboldt      L     helmbold@unm.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT06A-071 Fernando Camilo    L     fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]

Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> August    September 
    Astronomy ~  414 [061] 459 [282] 
  Maintenance ~  199        40 [068] 
  Test & Comm ~  114 [005] 157 [021] 
  Un-assigned ~   17        64       

Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
  Active checkout - 0
          On Hold - 20
         Schedule - 58
        Completed - 522


Current backlog [hours prior to 06B*] = 1019
   [2001:2(1), 2002:3(1), 2003:19(1), 2004:107(7), 2005:544(23), 2006:344(18)]
   Backlog excluding 139 hrs of monitoring projects after 06B = 880
Total time to discharge [hours] = 2219
   Includes 419 hours of monitoring after trimester 06B
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 06B

Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger

Digital Electronics Status -- Randy

Digital Group Status 29-JUL-06 THRU 04-AUG-06

***Operations, Problem Summary***

MCB...

Jason and J.D. helped Gary Anderson with an MCB problem in the receiver room; mainly by standing by and offering help over the phone. The problem somehow mysteriously fixed itself later in the day with no real determination of the cause of the failure. Gary's PF Rack MCB box was returned to the lab and tested OK. Since our spare was in place when things recovered (on their own), Gary decided to just leave it in place.

Active Surface...

- Replaced two motors and one LVDT.
- Repaired one module in the actuator room.
- Supervised the first RFI screen retro-fit by Nathan & D. Woody.

***Development***

Caltech Continuum Backend (CCB)...

Construction of CCB #3 is still underway with a revised completion date of 18-AUG-06. Basically, testing of PCBA's, etc. was delayed pending evaluation of the CCB SELF TEST feature which was recently added to CLEO by Ron Maddalena. This new Self Test feature seems to be working properly; however, Ron still has a few minor changes to implement.

Spectrometer LTA Re-design...

Work continues on the LTA re-design project... A detailed project schedule should be ready by 18-AUG-06. Following this, an informal preliminary design review will be scheduled for sometime in late August or early September. Work on this project was temporarily suspended in lieu of preparation of an additional high speed sampler for the Lab Spectrometer at Roger's request (see below).

Lab Spectrometer...

Efforts were made to prepare an additional high speed sampler for the Lab Spectrometer; however, without access to a high speed oscilloscope, this task became quite time-consuming. Systematic tweaking of some internal cable lengths finally led to success; so the sampler is now ready for integration into the Lab Spectrometer. This should happen sometime early next week.

ALMA (As reported by Jason Ray)...

- The new 300k feedthru connectors arrived, so Jason and J.D. spent some time in the Metrology Lab taking precision measurements in order to verify that they were built to spec. They were!
- Some time was spent preparing to send off the design package to FreedomCAD? for PCB re-design in order to eliminate blind/buried vias.
- Four of the new 300k feedthru connectors were packed up and sent to CV for leak testing.
- Manasseh Obi continued his work on bias card noise analyses and measurements with input from John, Jason, and Randy.

***Plans***

- Continue Active Surface maintenance...
- Continue construction of CCB #3...
- Continue work on LTA re-design and prepare project schedule...
- Continue ALMA support as needed...

Randy

Software Status -- Amy

This ends Week 5 of 6 in the fifth development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC52006. We will not be releasing at the end of this cycle. Instead, we plan to patch MRs in as they are completed and sponsor tested in system.

MelindaMello attended the Penn Array Review Meeting in Philadelphia.

Operational support light and included:

Modification Requests:

Pulsar Related -- Scott

MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen

Met with the new MIT/LL Project head Mark Czerwinski. They are writing a RFQ for two periods: First 9 months of FY 07 and 3 months of FY 07 plus FY 08. We will update the Statement of work to have 9 month and 15 month labor periods.

We ran calibration tests on Monday and Tuesday Nights. Regular spacecraft tracking Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Any other Business

-- CarlBignell - 03 Aug 2006

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