GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting
AGENDA
Activities List
The 8th weld since we started Phase 2 should finish this morning. We will be setting final heights early next week, then forming and grouting the latter part of the week, while 4 more welds are completed. We will move the telescope to 184.45 next weekend or Monday the 30th so that we can perform the final weld.
After we move, there will be only 4 more welds to make, followed by the remaining grouting. We are looking at our crystal balls, tea leaves, and chicken bones, and the week of August 15 keeps coming into our dreams. The "fat lady" ain't singing yet, but she has been given a copy of the music to look over and start practicing!
A bit more lost time in the last two weeks than we've been having during the shutdown. We lost 1.2 hrs during the single-dish school due to software. And, 3.3 hrs during the pulsar survey due to Spigot error (buffer overruns, data taking stopped, data writing problems).
Last Week
=========
Observations for proposals
GBT07B-012
Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
GBT07B-012 [F ] Dunc Lorimer
Pulsar searching in the classroom using the GBT
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup
Contact Information for 08/02/2007 - 08/16/2007
=======================================
Proposal PI Bands Email [NRAO contact]
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT07B-012 Dunc Lorimer 3 Duncan.Lorimer@mail.wvu.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT07B-035 Sue Ann Heatherly LCS sheather@nrao.edu [Ron Maddalena]
GBT07A-060 Julia Deneva S deneva@astro.cornell.edu [Scott Ransom]
Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> July August September
Astronomy ~ 493 195 [180] 31 [117]
Maintenance ~ 203 189 21 [068]
Test & Comm ~ 49 361 302 [030]
Un-assigned ~ 0 0 366
Proposal Checkouts #[hrs]*
=========================
Awaiting checkout - 0[0]
Active checkout - 0[0]
On Hold - 0[0]
Schedule - 76[3221]
Completed - 491[6289]
* All but completed queue applies to GBT only proposals
Current backlog of Reg & RRS proposals [hours prior to 07B*] = 1170
[2005:369(14), 2006:358(18), 2007:444(21)]
Backlog includes 59 hrs of monitoring projects
182 hrs of vlbi projects
Total time to discharge [hours] = 5195
Includes 274 hours++ of monitoring (not Large or Spec) after trimester 07B
1646 hours of Regular & RRS proposals
3317 hours of Large proposals
50 hours of Track Refurbishment proposals
182 hours of VLBI proposals
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 07B
++ Time is counted in other break down as well. 07B
- S band cold and ready to install July 24
- X band cold and ready to install July 31
- Feed defroster in the shop for welding, installation around August 6
- MUSTANG installation scheduled for August 6
- Ka Band: components are being assembled in the symmetric configuration.
- Ka band: Installation of components expected to be complete next week with a receiver cool down for July 30 testing.
- Had first astronomical light with the Event Capture alpha version. Congratuations to Patrick, Brandon and all.
- Telecon with UC. Berkeley clarified some issues with FPGA timing. This will help with future work.
- Two new Cicada memos. See https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/CICADA/CicadaNotes
The 3 GBT Az/El tachometers sent for repair, to Reliance, should return to GB by Friday 7/20/07.
Started on Citect GUI to simulate PLC inputs and monitor PLC states. This is to check out the ladder logic before we install it on the GBT.
We are in the third full week of the fifth development cycle of 2007 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC52007. Effort metrics are now available for C3 and C4 and can be found at MetricsC32007 and MetricsC42007 respectively. A history of all effort metric reports can be found at SddMetrics. These might be of particular interest to project managers. If you have ideas for additional visualizations of the software effort metrics which would be useful, please let me know and I'll certainly try to accommodate you.
Operational and user support was very light this week.
Modification Requests:
- MRs ready for integration/regression testing:
- MRs ready for sponsor testing:
- MRs under development:
- Modify Peak Finding Algorithm for Pointing/Focus Code (ModificationRequest4C207)
- FrankGhigo and ToddHunter have settled on GaussianFilter as preferred method. However, since this approach changes the resultant pointing offset values, deployment of the selected approach will be postponed until after the new pointing model is implemented this summer.
- SCCU Servo Changes (ModificationRequest1C806)
- Although the code is working, we have found that commanded velocity spikes occur during normal observing. To date this has not been a problem since the hardware filters out the spikes. However with the hardware modifications coupled with this MR, the spikes will corrupt the intended operation of the friction compensation. John is working on modeling a different methods of deriving the velocity commands.
- MRs under CCC review:
- MRs being written:
- Ka FITS Message Angle Keyword (ModificationRequest6C507)
- Ka FITS Message Angle Comment (ModificationRequest11C507)
- Control of Subreflector Nodding by Astrid (ModificationRequest2C407)
- MR written, need resolution of design, scheduled to be decided by end of July.
- Set GFM's Processing of Ka Data to Raw (ModificationRequest3C507)
- MR complete except for testing section.
- Ka Manager Changes (ModificationRequest1C507)
- Correct Labeling of Ka-band Hybrid-Switched Signals (ModificationRequest3C407)
- Port Holography Manager to Linux (ModificationRequest1C307)
- Reassembling Holography equipment and vxWorks system to confirm working original configuration with backed-out mods to original interface card. Splitting this into 2 MRs - one for straight port, second to add new interface via DIO card. Working or reorganizing existing code units according to current practices, and updating for Linux.
- Add DIO interface to Linux Holography Manager (ModificationRequest12C507)
- Implement PFM5 revised pointing/focus model (ModificationRequest1C407)
- MR to sponsor for review. Working on code changes. Expecting test data set to be ready for evaluation next week.
- Create Pyrgeometer Manager (ModificationRequest2C207)
- Mustang Manager (ModificationRequest6C507)
- The newer members of the project are still getting spun up on Mustang concepts. We've also been writing small documents that explain (at least attempt) what we need for individual pieces of the software for Mustang, e.g. this week we worked on co-adding and time stamping documents. We also spent time determining if a specific control parameter is actually pixel-level controllable (which is what the existing documentation indicated, but does not appear to be correct).
- Data File Stream Upgrade (ModificationRequest7C507)
- We had the initial SDD-wide data streaming brainstorming session.
- Tabled MRs:
- Other Activities:
- Complete Pointing Processing Description Memo - Work being performed as part of implement model 5 task above.
- Dynamic Scheduling - Little or no effort this week.
- Create SRS for PST Administrative Functionality - Started document. We are meeting with Carl to identify requirements.
- Analysis of Trajectory Generation Problems - Nothing to report.
- Find/Fix Command Stream Glitches - Attempting to find cause/source of velocity errors.
- Complete Documentation of Cross-Polarization Changes - Almost complete.
- Evaluate GBT Data Handling Status & Future Options - No work this week. Bob will start writing things up from his notes next week and have a first draft by the end of the week.
The last few parts for the 140ft gigabit network upgrade have arrived. The new switch is configured and has been tested. Installation is scheduled for Monday.
Parts have been specified for connecting the 20m telescope to the main network. This will also be a gigabit link due to the only available fibres being single mode.
PTCS -- PTCS Team
- Engineering
- One accelerometer set with a non-functional axis is undergoing repair. Apparently, a couple of op-amps had failed.
- Servo
- The servo improvements project planning wikipage has been released for comment.
- Pointing
- Inclinometer data from the June 29th move from azimuth 229 to 192 have been processed. See the plots on the wikipage. The preliminary conclusion is that once there were 2 out of 4 wheels per truck rolling on the new track, the magnitude of the small scale features in the local tilt were reduced as indicated by the average of the X1 and X2 inclinometers (track.pdf). Also, the mechanical acceleration and twist of the alidade structure was reduced as indicated by the difference of the X1 and X2 inclinometers (mtrack.pdf). More data will be recorded during the 8 degree azimuth move at the end of next week.
- The pointing group had a meeting yesterday where Kim summarized the performance of the new pointing model that will be implemented after sufficient track data and X-band pointing data have been acquired once the track refurbishment is completed. The results for offset pointing are encouraging. Software unit tests of the new M&C code are ongoing, and the double blind test of Kim's model prediction vs. the new M&C code implementation will be attempted soon.
- Holography
Not much to report this week except to say that the driftscan observations are going mostly smoothly (except for a strange Spigot "buffer-overrun' issue that is hitting us semi-randomly or possibly when accessing a certain RAID) and processing is slowly happenning as well (we have ~6-7 hours of survey data processed now! 
Last week, Paul Demorest and I had a very good meeting about the pulsar backend with Randy, Jason, the summer students and one or two others. We seemed to convince ourselves that some of the worries we had about doing coherent de-dispersion on the BEE2 were likely unfounded.
Note: I'll not be at the meeting tomorrow as I am playing Mr Mom this week since my wife is out of town. So I'll be working mostly from home all day.
MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen
- Normal Spacecraft tracking this week.
- MIT/LL requested we run some test peaks on GPS spacecraft that are very bright at 1227 and 1575 MHz. Pointing offsets were somewhat larger that for astronomical sources (about 3 arcmin). We looking into this.
- Want to run some pointing tests this weekend. There is some difference between the pointing model in the 140 observers guide and in memo 101 by Van Horner.
We are starting to devise the strategy for fall commissioning and observing. One of the products of Tuesday's meeting is a rough-cut draft of one possible sequence of commissioning events (see Planning07B
and Planning07C). On Thursday, Carl, Richard, and I met and came up with various ways we can use the fall observing time to reduce our backlog of observing without compromising commissioning activities. At 11 AM today, Galen will be chairing a meeting on Ka-band. One topic we will discuss is how might the fall schedule mesh with our plans for Zpec, Spectrometer and a single polarization Ka-band receiver.
-- RichardPrestage - 19 Jul 2007
Revision r1.14 - 20 Jul 2007 - 13:57 GMT - AmyShelton
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