NRAO Home  >  Green Bank  |  Wiki Topic:    GB > Observing > CommissioningMeetings > CommissioningMeeting06Sep22
   Changes | Index | Contents | Search | Go

GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting

22nd September 2006

AGENDA

Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob

Harry and John have completed the survey of the anchor bolts, and they, I, and Jeff are reducing the data.

Some work was done this week on the structural repair under the actuator room, and will continue next week.

Observing News -- Ron

We supported 20 projects in 25 observing sessions, including two radar and one VLB run. The average setup time was 15min. The telescope was also scheduled for 17 hrs of maintenance, 4 hours of software tests, and 2.5 hrs of receiver checkouts. The Penn Array had its first commissioning run (8 hrs) last night.

Lost time was again rather low -- 2.5 hrs, about 1.7% of the time devoted to checkouts, commissioning, and astronomy. We had only 5 operator shifts with any lost-time problems. The causes of the lost time were:

For the next 12 weeks, Kristen Thomas, a student from earlier this summer, has joined the support group and will be working on GBTIDL documentation.

Scheduling Status -- Carl 

Last Week
=========

Observations for proposals
   GBT06A-040, GBT06A-030, GBT06B-030, 
   GBT06C-053, GBT06B-044, GBT06A-068, 
   BU031     , GBT06A-046, GBT06B-024, 
   GBT05C-001, GBT06B-015, GBT05C-057, 
   GBT04C-031, GBT06B-027, GBT05C-037, 
   GBT06C-049, GBT06C-016, GBT06B-018, 
   GBT05B-018, GBT06B-019

Completed proposals
   GBT06A-040, GBT06B-030, GBT06A-068, 
   GBT06A-046, GBT05C-001, GBT06B-027,
   GBT05B-018

Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
  GBT06C-053 [F B] Martin Zwaan
       A search for molecules in CaII absorbers          
  GBT06B-044 [F  ] Robert Ferdman
       Timing Binary and Millisecond Pulsars from the    
       Parkes Multibeam Survey                           
  GBT04C-031 [ P ] Paul Kondratko
       Monitoring of Five NGC4258-like Water Megamasers  
       Discovered with the GBT and the DSN               
  GBT06B-024 [ P ] Jeff Mangum
       CCS Chronometry of Dense Cores                    
  GBT06A-004 [ P ] Bill Reach
       Water Masers from Protostars in IC 1396A          
  GBT06B-047 [  B] David Schiminovich
       HI Observations of Local analogs of Lyman Break   
       Galaxies                                          
  GBT06B-015 [ P ] Larry Morgan
       NH3 and CCS Mapping of Triggered Star Formation   
       Regions                                           
  GBT04B-014 [ P ] Paul Kondratko
       Anchoring the Extragalactic Distance Scale        
  GBT06C-049 [  B] Karen Masters
       Mapping Matter in the Nearby Universe with 2MASS  
  GBT05C-037 [F B] Nissim Kanekar
       Measuring changes in fundamental constants with   
       redshifted OH  lines                              
  GBT06A-071 [F  ] Fernando Camilo
       Constraining the distance to the magnetar XTE     
       J1810-197 via HI absorption                       
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup

Contact Information for 10/05/2006 - 10/19/2006
=======================================
Proposal   PI                 Bands Email [NRAO contact]    
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT06C-051 Lincoln Greenhill  K     greenhill@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-053 Scott Ransom       S     sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-042 Nissim Kanekar     4     nkanekar@nrao.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT06A-065 Rachel Friesen     K     rfriesen@uvastro.phys.uvic.ca [Toney Minter]
GBT06A-054 Paul Demorest      8     demorest@astron.berkeley.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-032 Steve Begin        S     sbegin@physics.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-053 Martin Zwaan       8     mzwaan@eso.org [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-033 Jason Hessels      8     hessels@physics.mcgill.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06B-044 Robert Ferdman     L     ferdman@phas.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-032 Peter Martin       L     pgmartin@cita.utoronto.ca [Jay Lockman]
GBT06C-021 Erik Rosolowsky    K     erosolow@cfa.harvard.edu [Ron Maddalena]
GBT04C-031 Paul Kondratko     K     pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06C-023 Bruce Campbell     S     campbellb@si.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06C-012 Steve Curran       8     sjc@phys.unsw.edu.au [Carl Bignell]
GBT06A-014 Andrea Tarchi      K     atarchi@ira.cnr.it [Jim Braatz]
GBT05C-023 Fernando Camilo    8     fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-035 Jim Braatz         K     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06A-004 Bill Reach         K     reach@ipac.caltech.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-037 Joel Weisberg      L     jweisber@carleton.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06C-036 Claudia Cyganowski K     ccyganow@astro.wisc.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06C-037 Charlie Lada       K     clada@cfa.harvard.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06C-048 Nissim Kanekar     8     nkanekar@nrao.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT06B-028 Ingrid Stairs      L     istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-049 Karen Masters      L     kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT06C-028 Brenda Matthews    K     brenda.matthews@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca [Ron Maddalena]
GBT06C-006 Wouter Vlemmings   K     wouter@jb.man.ac.uk [Frank Ghigo]
GBT06C-039 Jim Braatz         K     jbraatz@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT06C-018 Ingrid Stairs      L     istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT06C-008 Raghunathan Sriana 4     anand@iucaa.ernet.in [Toney Minter]

Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> September October   November  December  
    Astronomy ~  530 [107] 500 [552] 450 [373] 517 [270] 
  Maintenance ~   79 [017]  79 [034]  45 [051]  52 [034] 
  Test & Comm ~  112 [007] 129       172 [007]  82       
     Shutdown ~    0         0        36        36       
  Un-assigned ~    0        44        19        78       

Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
  Active checkout - 0
          On Hold - 16
         Schedule - 84
        Completed - 550


Current backlog [hours prior to 06B*] = 924
   [2001:2(1), 2003:19(1), 2004:107(7), 2005:507(21), 2006:289(14)]
   Backlog excluding 139 hrs of monitoring projects after 06B = 785
Total time to discharge [hours] = 3306
   Includes 424 hours of monitoring after trimester 06B
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 06B

Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger

Operations

Some cryogenics issues related to the Penn Array were encountered. These were worked around, but longer-term, more robust solutions need to be determined.

Development

Q-band Receiver: Testing started last Friday. All four channels are operational but one has lower gain that is not yet understood. Data over 40-49 GHz looks encouraging at this stage. Trx measurements with the Lab Spectrometer do not look to be correct, and that is not yet understood, but with standard methods the Trx is in the 35-45K range. Receiver testing continues.

Ka Receiver/Zpectrometer: Monday and Tuesday were spent testing with the Zpectrometer. Generally that went well, but there are some questions to resolve. The Zpectrometer sees a large (~20K) broadband noise offset between the beams; that has not been seen with the CCB. The zpectrometer rack passed RFI testing with flying colors. Receiver testing continues.

Other: Time was spent this week locating and correcting resonances in coaxial cables at the 43m, and helium leaks (a broken flex line at one of the bearings). Installation of the cryogenic receiver has been delayed until mid-November by MIT.

Digital Electronics Status -- Randy

Operations, Problem Summary

Development

Plans

Software Status -- Amy

This ends the 5th 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. We conducted the first of our integration tests this past Tuesday; the report is available here. We are scheduled for our second round of integration tests tonight; the report will be available here.

Operational support was relatively light this week.

We spend quite a bit of time working with the UMd Zpectrometer people this week. Much progress was made.

Modification Requests:

Pulsar Related -- Scott

Upgraded spigot2 to the latest stable RHEL kernel as per Chris and Wolfgang's request. Also updated the EDT driver to the latest version during the process.

Ryan Lynch and I managed to "fix" the SEGFAULT in the 2048-lag 8-bit modes so that we could take data with it. Unfortunately, there still appear to be memory access issues as the output lags do not look right (and there are some strange offsets present). It was encouraging to see data that almost looked right. Unfortunately, testing is an issue as we need the system to correctly check all the shared memory calls etc.

MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen

Normal spacecraft tracking this week, each day from 9:00 PM to 9:00 AM.

Bob and Kenny found and fixed an RF cable problem at the 43m, which took considerable trouble. Pete and GB Ops helped with 43m and man-lift.

Commissioning Plans -- Ron

The Penn Array had its first test run last night. There were no changes to the scheduling of any commissiong tasks.

Receiver Installation Schedules

Any other Business

-- RichardPrestage - 16 Aug 2006

Topic CommissioningMeeting06Sep22 . { Edit | Attach | Ref-By | Printable | Diffs | r1.11 | > | r1.10 | > | r1.9 | More }
Revision r1.11 - 25 Sep 2006 - 12:32 GMT - BobAnderson
Parents: WebHome > CommissioningMeetings 		Content copyright © 1999-2007 by the contributing authors.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.