GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting
AGENDA
-
- Busy week for track work. We had two surveying runs in early morning hours this week. These went successfully, thanks to the leadership of John Shelton and Harry Morton. John and Jeremy Hill are reducing the data on elevation change, and Harry is reviewing x-y data on the jack studs. Vertex was also here and were impressed. We had several good discussions on how to execute the work (between survey shots).
- Continental provided a shop schedule for the baseplates. Looks good, and is close to our schedule.
- Jeremy has the tensile machine ready, and is connecting up the strain gauges he mounted on our test article. We hope to give it a test today, since this is his last day with us. He has been very successful at a number of tasks, including installing Harry's total station software on a modern computer- it was running too fast for the communication link!
- I completed the instrument calibration on the ultrasonic bolt strain detector, and we will try it on Jeremy's test article today as well.
We had a very good week. We supported 12 projects in 26 observing sessions. Average setup time was 11 min. The telescope was also scheduled for 42 hrs of maintenance and 8 hrs of track measurements (in preparation for next summer's shutdown). Lost time was 1.4 hrs, just a bit above 1%. Of the 14 operator shifts, only 5 had any lost-time problems. The major causes of lost time were:
- Astrid data base -- 0.4 hrs
- Power Balance/Gain slope -- 0.3 hrs
- Spectral Processor -- 0.2 hrs
- Message Mux (2 incidents) -- 0.2 hrs
- Active Surface -- 0.2 hrs
- Others (Astrid, SDFITS) -- 0.1 hrs
A proposal was not in the Astrid database and the operator's instruction may not have included the critical step of only being able to add a project when logged in as monctrl. It took 4 calls before the operator could find someone who could help.
Note that the Power Balance/Gain problem will be less likely once all the converter rack modules are modified to Steve White's new design. At our observing issues meeting this week, all agreed that the new design will reduce the number and severity of these power problems and we suggest that all modules be similarly modified.
Last Week
=========
Observations for proposals
GBT06B-030, GBT06B-020, GBT06B-053,
GBT05B-042, GBT06B-012, GBT05B-034,
GBT06B-026, GBT06B-038, GBT06B-016,
GBT06B-006, GBT06B-019, GBT06A-071
Completed proposals
GBT05B-042, GBT05B-034, GBT06B-038,
GBT06B-006
Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
GBT06B-030 [F ] Peter Martin
Characterizing Dust Evolution in Intermediate
Velocity Clouds
GBT06B-020 [F ] Karen O'Neil
HI in Galaxies and Environments
GBT06B-021 [F ] Karen Masters
Mapping Matter in the Nearby Universe with 2MASS
BU031 [F ] Jim Ulvestad
A Search for Young Supernovae in the Antennae
Galaxies
GBT06B-012 [F ] Loris Magnani
OH Observations of the Envelope of MBM 40
GBT06B-013 [F ] Tyler Foster
CTB 102: The Largest HII Region in the Galaxy?
GBT05C-023 [F ] Fernando Camilo
PSR J1833-1034, the Very Young Pulsar in the SNR
G21.5-0.9
GBT06B-016 [F ] Sandra Bruenken
A Search for the Nucleobase Uracil towards
Sagittarius B2
GBT06B-019 [F ] Toney Minter
Obtaining A Complete Sample Of Pulsar OH
Absorption With The GBT
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup
Contact Information for 08/10/2006 - 08/24/2006
=======================================
Proposal PI Bands Email [NRAO contact]
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT06B-040 Nissim Kanekar U nkanekar@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-053 Scott Ransom S sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-020 Karen O'Neil L koneil@nrao.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GBT06B-032 Steve Begin S sbegin@physics.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-021 Karen Masters L kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06B-044 Robert Ferdman L ferdman@phas.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-033 Jason Hessels 8 hessels@physics.mcgill.ca [Scott Ransom]
BK127 Kirsten Knudsen L knudsen@mpia-hd.mpg.de []
GBT02A-053 Carl Heiles LS cheiles@astron.berkeley.edu []
GBT06B-034 Jacqueline van Gor L jvangork@astro.columbia.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06B-013 Tyler Foster C Tyler.Foster@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca [Dana Balser]
GBT06B-025 Maura McLaughlin 3 maura.mclaughlin@mail.wvu.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-014 Paulo Freire S pfreire@naic.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-026 Julia Deneva XC deneva@astro.cornell.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-028 Ingrid Stairs L istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-018 Michael Kramer 8 mkramer@jb.man.ac.uk [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-070 Fernando Camilo CUSX8 fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-009 Joe Helmboldt L helmbold@unm.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT06A-072 Vicky Kaspi S vkaspi@physics.mcgill.ca []
Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> July August September
Astronomy ~ 521 417 [061] 449 [282]
Maintenance ~ 145 199 40 [068]
Test & Comm ~ 78 108 [005] 155 [021]
Un-assigned ~ 0 21 77
Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
Active checkout - 0
On Hold - 20
Schedule - 59
Completed - 521
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] = 2250
Includes 419 hours of monitoring after trimester 06B
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 06B
No problems this week. Fabrication of cables to be installed for the Zpectrometer operation is underway.
Q-band Receiver:
Work on upgrading the 300K RF plate to bring the bandwidth up to spec continued this week. A pair of the cryo LNAs which were in the system on the telescope last winter have been examined at CDL. These came from the channels with typically the best and worst performance, and since our testing indicates the short-period spectral instabilities center at the LNAs, we felt a comparison might be useful. Marian did find a clear difference in the DC gate characteristics of the two amps, so pursuing this avenue will continue. We are doing tests on the test dewar to see if transients in the bias circuitry could be damaging the amps.
Ka Receiver:
The card cage modifications are complete, a bracket is being designed to
mount it on the receiver frame where the previous room temperature plate
was located. The room temperature plate portion is progressing,
components of the differencing loops have been mounted and we're
starting on mounting the continuum splitters and amplifiers.
C-band:
Many of the cryostat fab parts have been completed by the shop. The cryostat can is ready to be leak checked and then sent off for electropolishing. We expect to begin the refrigerator upgrade in September when the receiver is removed to make way for the Penn Array.
Zpectrometer:
Some initial assembly work for the rack connector plate has been done.
Digital Group Status 22-JUL-06 THRU 28-JUL-06
***Operations, Problem Summary***
No significant problems to report.
***Development***
Caltech Continuum Backend (CCB)...
Construction of CCB #3 is still underway with a revised completion date of 04-AUG-06.
Spectrometer LTA Re-design...
Work continues on the LTA re-design project... A detailed project schedule should be ready by 04-AUG-06.
Following this, an informal preliminary design review will be scheduled for sometime in Mid-August.
Lab Spectrometer...
No change from last week's report.
ALMA (As reported by Jason Ray)...
John Ford, Manasseh, and Jason Ray traveled to CV for the Front End Group face to face meeting. Jason prepared
and delivered a presentation regarding the bias modules. The outcome was that we will do a production run of
"rev C2" modules (qty 12) to be delivered to the cartridge builders ASAP. We will also be working on the "rev D"
modules to be delivered early 2007, once "rev C2" is out for production. Also, we will be inspecting our new 300k
feedthru connectors due to arrive July 28 and doing some mechanical fit testing with them.
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
This ends Week 4 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.
KarenONeil, MelindaMello and PaulMarganian have returned from the JCMT to gather information on their dynamic scheduling system. Our intent was to learn as much from the JCMT as possible since they have both policy experience and working software. Karen, Melinda, and Paul are currently organizing a technical seminar on their experience.
MelindaMello has been preparing slides for the upcoming Penn Array Review Meeting in Philadelphia.
Operational support included:
- The Spectrometer could not balance power at J10, determined insufficient power to balance, asked operator to call electronics (operator log key 70092).
- The operator could not find a project in the observation management database, and could not find the add_project script in order to add it to the database. We ran the script for the operator and had him modify the add_project instructions to avoid this problem in the future.
- We verified use of Spider scans with Spectral Processor for visiting observer.
- We responded to a Message Mux failure. We are currently working on bug fix to alleviate message browser connection issues.
- We responded to a reported GBTIDL failure to process early-science data. We provided a custom version of getfs to Jay Lockman so that he could process his data.
- We reponded to a sdfits failure to fill early-science data, older version of sdfits was found to work. sdfits-test has since been modified to accomodate this early-science data. Related to GBTIDL failure listed above.
- We responded to issue with sdfits - sdfits fails with -append, one needs to also supply a -backends value
Modification Requests:
- MRs ready for sponsor testing:
- MRs under development:
- MRs under CCC review:
- MRs being written:
Very little to report this week -- only a few observations, and those were by experience observers who had no problems. I was swamped with lots of other junk. Note: I'll miss the meeting tomorrow morning as I'll be driving to GB (just a couple hour visit to talk to Don Backer and drop-off/pick-up disks and tapes).
MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen
-- RichardPrestage - 06 Jul 2006
Revision r1.8 - 28 Jul 2006 - 12:40 GMT - BobAnderson
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