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GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting

10 March 2006

AGENDA

Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob

The cost information for the warranty claim was completed and sent to our lawyers Tuesday.

No word yet on NSF permission to award contracts.

Observing News -- Ron

This week, number of projects was a bit higher than usual with 19 projects in 27 observing sessions, including a VLB run. A radar run had been scheduled but Arecibo couldn't transmit and we went with an alternative project. We also have the first outside group that is using the CCB -- they seem to have already some very interesting results. Even with the large number of projects, the average setup time was 11 minutes, the lowest I've seen. The telescope was also scheduled for 8.5 hrs of maintenance and 4 hrs of PTCS tests.

Total lost time was 8.5 hrs about 5% of the time scheduled for tests and observing. More than 2/3rds of this was due to the weather. The breakdown of lost time was:

Scheduling Status -- Carl 

Last Week
=========

Observations for proposals
   GBT06A-051, GBT06A-030, GBT06A-053, 
   GBT06A-042, GBT06A-054, GBT05C-041, 
   GBT05B-042, GBT06A-066, GBT05C-042, 
   GBT05C-020, GBT06A-001, GBT05C-032, 
   GBT05C-065, GBT06A-014, GBT05C-023, 
   GM062     , GBT06A-049, GBT06A-027, 
   GBT06A-038, GBT06A-018

Completed proposals
   GBT06A-051, GBT06A-042, GBT06A-001
   GBT05C-020

Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
  GBT06A-053 [F  ] Scott Ransom
       Continued Timing of the Binary and Millisecond    
       Pulsars in Terzan 5                               
  GBT06A-032 [ P ] Jim Braatz
       A Search for the First SiO Megamaser              
  GBT05A-020 [ P ] Yancy Shirley
       The Chemical and Dynamical State of Purportedly   
       Nascent Pre-protostellar Cores in Lynds 1521      
  GBT06A-066 [  B] David Nidever
       HI Mapping of the Extended Magellanic Stream      
  GBT06A-044 [F  ] Jeremy Darling
       Intrinsic HI and OH Absorption in Compact Radio   
       Sources at High Redshift                          
  GBT05A-033 [F  ] Ingrid Stairs
       Shapiro Delay in the PSR J1802-2124 System        
  GBT06A-068 [ P ] Yancy Shirley
       The Kinematical and Chemical Structure of         
       Pre-protostellar Cores                            
  GBT05B-044 [F  ] Maura McLaughlin
       Studying the Interactions in the J0737-3039 System
  GBT04C-043 [F  ] Scott Ransom
       Timing the Eccentric Millisecond Pulsar Binary in 
       Globular Cluster NGC 1851                         
  GBT05C-022 [ P ] Jim Braatz
       The Accretion Disks and Supermassive Black Holes  
       in NGC 2273 and NGC 4051                          
  BB217      [F  ] Edward Boyce
       Observations of Gravitational Lens Central Images 
  GBT05C-023 [F  ] Fernando Camilo
       PSR J1833-1034, the Very Young Pulsar in the SNR  
       G21.5-0.9                                         
  GBT05C-046 [F  ] Ingrid Stairs
       Timing of a Relativistic Binary and other Pulsars 
       from the Arecibo PALFA Survey                     
  GBT06A-027 [  B] Karen Masters
       Mapping Matter in the Nearby Universe with 2MASS  
  GBT06A-038 [ PB] Tom Troland
       Magnetic Fields in the Galactic Halo via the HI   
       Zeeman Effect                                     
  GBT06A-049 [ P ] Tony Readhead
       Definitive Detection of Excess Arcminute Scale    
       CMB Anisotropies                                  
  GBT06A-018 [ P ] Joe McMullin
       Isotopic Abundances in Planetary Nebulae          
  GBT06A-009 [ P ] Jim Condon
       H_0 and Dark Energy                               
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup

Contact Information for 03/23/2006 - 04/06/2006
=======================================
Proposal   PI                 Bands Email [NRAO contact]    
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT06A-040 Mark McKinnon      LK    mmckinno@nrao.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06A-053 Scott Ransom       S     sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-032 Jim Braatz         Q     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-044 Jeremy Darling     8     jdarling@origins.colorado.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06A-011 Mike Blanton       L     blanton@nyu.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GBT06A-066 David Nidever      L     dnidever@virginia.edu [Jay Lockman]
GBT05C-032 Yancy Shirley      BQ    yshirley@as.arizona.edu [Ron Maddalena]
GBT06A-046 Glen Langston      U     glangsto@nrao.edu [Glen Langston]
GBT05C-065 Jim Braatz         K     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-068 Yancy Shirley      K     yshirley@as.arizona.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT04C-031 Paul Kondratko     K     pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-003 Chris Clemens      L     clemens@physics.unc.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT05B-034 Ingrid Stairs      L     istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-059 Nissim Kanekar     Q     nkanekar@nrao.edu [Dana Balser]
GBT06A-027 Karen Masters      L     kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GBT06A-049 Tony Readhead      B     acr@astro.caltech.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT06A-038 Tom Troland        L     troland@pa.uky.edu [Jay Lockman]
BB184      Jim Braatz         K     jbraatz@nrao.edu []
GBT05C-026 Tom Devlin         XQ    devlin@physics.rutgers.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT06A-018 Joe McMullin       Q     jmcmulli@nrao.edu [Dana Balser]
GBT06A-019 Rachel Osten       S     ro6b@Virginia.EDU [Ryan Ransom]
GBT06A-009 Jim Condon         K     jcondon@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
BH139      David Hough        X     dhough@trinity.edu []

Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> March     April     May       
    Astronomy ~  619 [287] 541 [492] 505 [305] 
  Maintenance ~   28 [051]  16 [102]  20 [068] 
  Test & Comm ~   95 [028] 148 [046] 150 [040] 
  Un-assigned ~    2        17        69       

Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
  Active checkout - 0
          On Hold - 22
         Schedule - 63
        Completed - 463


Current backlog [hours prior to 06A*] = 1019
   [2001:2(1), 2002:88(2), 2003:19(1), 2004:161(11), 2005:621(31), 2006:128(3)]
   Backlog excluding 154 hrs of monitoring projects after 06A = 865   
Total time to discharge [hours] = 2809
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 06A

Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger

Operations

Nothing to report.

Development

Ka RX, Zpectrometer Zpectrometer tap couplers have not been tested yet, will be tested next week. One of three phase switch driver circuit boards has been designed and is going out for fabrication.

Lab Spectrometer IF System Filter designs are fabricated, tests show physical units have responses approx. 12% lower than designed, possibly because of fabrication tolerances, a second fabrication run is being scaled and designed. More SMT components have arrived. Design of amplifier bias, attenuator and mixer boards is in progress.

ORM Power Divider: Waiting for chip delivery.

IF System: The National Regulator DIE's arrived and two more ODM amplifiers were built and tested. Assuming a gain in the ORM Power Divider, an amplifier design and layout was completed for the CF module increasing the gain by 10 DB and the linearity by 6 DB. The final design of the ORM Power Divider is needed before parts are ordered, however.

Q-band: Drawings for the Q-Band test dewar and the cart/stand to hold the test dewar are complete and have been sent to the shop. Ran tests on waveguide attenuators, namely whether attenuator elements could be removed from hard epoxies without damage. (they can, but there is no guarantee that the element will not be damaged). Placed orders for several items for test dewar.

MLLN 140 Project: The shop is working on housings.

2Mar06 - Norrod, Anderson, Simon, Stennes, Watts, White

Digital Electronics Status -- Rich

Digital Electronics Status 3 Mar. 2006 – 9 Mar., 2006

***Operations, Problem summary***

No significant problems.

***Development***

Cal-Tech Continuum Backend (CCB):

The last two power supplies were tested. It was found that, for both supplies, the 8-volt supply has trouble driving a large capacitor plus a fairly heavy resistive load. We are re-evaluating whether the capacitor is really needed.

Progress has also been made on the twin-ax cable assemblies. Fifteen out of the 16 short cables required for the next unit are complete. We also need 16 long cables to complete cable construction for the unit presently under construction. Additional documentation for the external twin-ax cables was provided by Randy.

Test Spectrometer

We were successful in getting data out of the test spectrometer on Thursday. This demonstrates that the system survived the operating system upgrade. The data does not look that good so we still have some problems to solve.

LTA Upgrade

Some effort was expended studying Chen’s LTA design as well as the design of the present LTA.

***Plans***

- Continue CCB construction. - Continue test spectrometer commissioning.

Software Status -- Amy

This ends Week 3 of 6 in the second development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC22006.

With regard to Observation Management, (1) We are adding a new Observing Directive which will allow pulsar observers to change the target data directory at any time in a Scheduling Block (ready for sponsor testing by ScottRansom), (2) We are removing the behavior of using the previously set scan duration within a Scan Type all non-Auto* Scan Types (ready for sponsor testing by KarenONeil), (3) We are changing the Location and Offset classes to allow subtraction of Offsets from Offsets and Offsets from Locations (i.e. offset1 = offset2 - offset3 or location1 = location2 - offset) (ready for integration testing), and (4) We are adding an Offset argument to Slew (ready for sponsor testing by KarenONeil).

The MR for enhancing the antenna FITS file to allow the LFCs to be recorded in the FITS file primary header is ready for sponsor testing by DanaBalser. The second antenna MR which was designed to fix a bug in the Antenna FITS file columns, OBSC_AZ & OBSC_EL has been successfully sponsor tested by RichardPrestage and patched into M&Cv6.1.

We continue to coordinate with UMd on creating a M&C Manager for the Zpectrometer. We are currently working with them to generate an API from their application code.

Preliminary testing of the CCB's integration with GFM went well. We were able to get CCB data to display in GFM during one of BrianMason's observations this week. More work remains to be done, but our results were encouraging.

Operational support for this week was light and included:

Change Control Committee -- John

Pulsar Related -- Scott

Had more discussions (after a spigot2 crash) with Chris and Wolfgang about the (eventual) upgrade to spigot2. There is a good chance that I'll go to GB next week for a couple days to work on this. We'll need a custom kernel for sure and serious testing of the new PCI EDT driver for v2.6 Linux kernels...

Also, had to do lots of prep (i.e. contacting many observers and getting them to backup/remove data) for the tons of spigot observations this week and next. So far so good with the observations...

Had an interesting discussion today with Fred Lo, Rich Bradley, Rick Fisher, and Walter Brisken about a possible future GBT beam-forming array for use at ~2GHz (primarily) for pulsar searches...

MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen

The installation of the PLC and new control computers at the 43m was completed. We resumed tracking on Wednesday March 8, and are tracking today March 10. Restart of operations was pretty smooth, although there were a few glitches that are being addressed.

This is the final month of the construction phase of the contract. We are just about on target to spend all the construction funds on schedule.

By the end of March, we hope to move operations to the Jansky Lab.

Any other Business

-- RichardPrestage - 09 Mar 2006

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