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GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting

15 September 2006

AGENDA

Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob

Observing News -- Ron

This report covers from 7 PM Thursday of last week to 7 PM last night. We again had a busy schedule of 19 projects in 27 observing sessions including 3 very successful Moon radar sessions. The telescope was also scheduled for 33 hrs of maintenance, 6 hours for calibration, and 2 hrs for receiver checkouts. Average setup time was the usual 12 min.

Only 4 instances of lost time plus 2 other problems that didn't produce any lost time. Lost time amounted to 1.5 hrs, about 1.1% of the non-maintenance time. Problems were:

We also scheduled our support through the middle of November. Today, Socorro will be releasing the new Proposal Submittal Tool. And, as most of us know, Penn Array is on the telescope.

Scheduling Status -- Carl 

Last Week
=========

Observations for proposals
   GBT06A-040, GBT06A-030, GBT06C-051, 
   GBT06B-042, GBT06B-054, GBT06B-032, 
   GBT06B-033, GBT06A-046, GBT02A-054, 
   GBT06B-003, GBT05C-001, GBT06C-004, 
   GBT06B-027, GBT06C-049, GBT06B-019, 
   GBT06A-070, GBT06A-072

Completed proposals
   GBT06B-054, GBT06A-070, GBT06A-072

Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
  GBT06A-040 [ PB] Mark McKinnon
       Spectroscopy of Bright, Northern Pulsars at 1.67  
       and 22.2 GHz                                      
  GBT06A-030 [F  ] Don Campbell
       Lunar surface studies via S-Band radar imagery    
       and interferometry                                
  GBT06B-030 [F  ] Peter Martin
       Characterizing Dust Evolution in Intermediate     
       Velocity Clouds                                   
  GBT06C-053 [F B] Martin Zwaan
       A search for molecules in CaII absorbers          
  GBT06B-044 [F B] Robert Ferdman
       Timing Binary and Millisecond Pulsars from the    
       Parkes Multibeam Survey                           
  GBT06A-068 [ P ] Yancy Shirley
       The Kinematical and Chemical Structure of         
       Pre-protostellar Cores                            
  BU031      [F  ] Jim Ulvestad
       A Search for Young Supernovae in the Antennae     
       Galaxies                                          
  GBT06A-046 [F  ] Glen Langston
       A search for the Largest Interstellar Molecule,   
       HC_13N                                            
  GBT06B-024 [ P ] Jeff Mangum
       CCS Chronometry of Dense Cores                    
  GBT05C-001 [F  ] Bruce Campbell
       Radar Mapping of the Moon at 70-cm Wavelength     
       Using Arecibo and the GBT                         
  GBT06B-003 [  B] Mark McKinnon
       A Search for Pulsed Maser Emission in PSR-SNR     
       Associations at 1720 MHz                          
  GBT06B-015 [ P ] Larry Morgan
       NH3 and CCS Mapping of Triggered Star Formation   
       Regions                                           
  GBT05C-057 [F  ] Regina Jorgenson
       Search for 21cm Absorption toward Radio Loud,     
       Extremely Optically Faint Sources                 
  GBT04B-014 [ P ] Paul Kondratko
       Anchoring the Extragalactic Distance Scale        
  GBT06B-027 [ P ] Ted Bergin
       Ammonia in Massive Pre-stellar Cores              
  GBT05C-037 [F B] Nissim Kanekar
       Measuring changes in fundamental constants with   
       redshifted OH  lines                              
  GBT06C-049 [  B] Karen Masters
       Mapping Matter in the Nearby Universe with 2MASS  
  GBT06C-016 [F  ] Fernando Camilo
       Studying the magnetar XTE J1810-197               
  GBT06B-018 [F  ] Michael Kramer
       Timing and General Relativity in the Double       
       Pulsar System                                     
  GBT05B-018 [F  ] Nissim Kanekar
       Do the fundamental constants change with time ?   
  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 09/28/2006 - 10/12/2006
=======================================
Proposal   PI                 Bands Email [NRAO contact]    
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT06A-053 Scott Ransom       S     sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-051 Lincoln Greenhill  K     greenhill@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-054 Paul Demorest      L     demorest@astron.berkeley.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-053 Martin Zwaan       A     mzwaan@eso.org [Toney Minter]
GBT06C-032 Peter Martin       L     pgmartin@cita.utoronto.ca [Jay Lockman]
GBT06C-021 Erik Rosolowsky    K     erosolow@cfa.harvard.edu [Ron Maddalena]
GBT05C-042 Scott Ransom       S     sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
BU031      Jim Ulvestad       S     julvesta@nrao.edu []
GBT04C-031 Paul Kondratko     K     pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06C-012 Steve Curran       8     sjc@phys.unsw.edu.au [Carl Bignell]
GBT06A-014 Andrea Tarchi      K     atarchi@ira.cnr.it [Jim Braatz]
GBT06B-024 Jeff Mangum        K     jmangum@nrao.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06C-035 Jim Braatz         K     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-004 Bill Reach         K     reach@ipac.caltech.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-047 David Schiminovich LA    ds@astro.columbia.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-037 Joel Weisberg      L     jweisber@carleton.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06C-036 Claudia Cyganowski K     ccyganow@astro.wisc.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-015 Larry Morgan       K     lmorgan@nrao.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT06C-048 Nissim Kanekar     8     nkanekar@nrao.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06C-037 Charles Lada       K     clada@cfa.harvard.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT04B-014 Paul Kondratko     KU    pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06C-038 Jay Lockman        L     jlockman@nrao.edu [Jay Lockman]
GBT06C-049 Karen Masters      L     kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT05C-037 Nissim Kanekar     A     nkanekar@nrao.edu [Glen Langston]
GBT06C-039 Jim Braatz         K     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06C-018 Ingrid Stairs      L     istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]

Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> September October   November  
    Astronomy ~  536 [172] 495 [569] 345 [105] 
  Maintenance ~   70 [034]  77 [034]  49 [051] 
  Test & Comm ~  112 [013] 128       174       
     Shutdown ~    0         0        36       
  Un-assigned ~    3        48       121       

Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
  Active checkout - 0
          On Hold - 16
         Schedule - 93
        Completed - 541


Current backlog [hours prior to 06B*] = 966
   [2001:2(1), 2003:19(1), 2004:107(7), 2005:533(22), 2006:305(17)]
   Backlog excluding 139 hrs of monitoring projects after 06B = 827
Total time to discharge [hours] = 3406
   Includes 424 hours of monitoring after trimester 06B
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 06B

Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger

Operations

Penn Array installed on Thursday the 14th. Receiver room cables required by the Zpectrometer have been installed.

Development

Q-band Receiver: Ran into a hitch with the feedhorn positions (interference with the window), but with the shop's help, now are back on track. Now starting to pump, and expect testing to start Monday.

Ka Receiver: Feedhorns have been installed and functional checks look good so far. Next week will mostly be occupied with Zpectrometer interface testing; more Lab Spectrometer, CCB, and noise measurements also remain to be done.

Digital Electronics Status -- Randy

Digital Group Status 09-SEP-06 THRU 15-SEP-06

***Operations, Problem Summary***

Active Surface...

No work was done on the Active Surface this week.

Quadrant Detector...

The GDAQ firmware was reprogrammed to fix the checksum calculation problem and a another problem related to setting up the ADC.

Weather Stations...

***Development***

Caltech Continuum Backend (CCB)...

Spectrometer LTA Re-design...

Lab Spectrometer...

No news to report...

ALMA (As reported by Jason Ray)...

Dave Woody is assembling a "test circuit" board which contains several circuits which will be evaluated as possible fixes for crosstalk issues in the bias module. If all goes well, we plan to implement these changes on the actual board layout.

***Plans***

Randy

Software Status -- Amy

This ends the fourth full week of 6 in the sixth development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC62006. We are scheduled to release on September 27.

Our testing and release schedule:

MelindaMello will be returning from the Virtual Observatory (VO) school next week.

Operational support was relatively light this week.

Modification Requests:

Pulsar Related -- Scott

MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen

Last week we had normal spacecraft tracking two days. There were computer communications problems between MIT/LL and NRAO on two other days that prevented tracking all of the time that was desired by MIT/LL.

We are preparing for the MIT/LL receiver upgrade at the end of the month, and are still working out differences in schedules.

Commissioning Plans -- Ron

The Penn Array was placed on the telescope, as planned. There were no changes to the scheduling of any commisiong tasks.

Receiver Installation Schedules

Any other Business

-- RichardPrestage - 16 Aug 2006

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