Information for Observers and Support Personnel

Alerts	Reports	Introduction	General Information	Strategies	Observing Tools	Spectral Line Data
Continuum Data	Pulsar Data	Problems & Solutions	New information	Comments	Meeting Summaries	Requests List

Recent Alerts

Q-BAND: GO does not switch the receiver beam switch when beam switching is chosen. Beam switch must be set by hand through the CLEO screens.
Peak & Focus: Total power mode should be used at all frequencys except when using the Ka-band receiver (then beam switch should be used?)
Peak: Sometimes GFM may produce the error message:
Missing or malformed Antenna FITS file for scan: n.
This is generally a true error message! Use fv or some other fits viewer to look at the antenna FITS file for that scan, and check for quantities SDMJD, SOBSC_AZ, etc in the main header. If these are missing, the antenna FITS file is indeed incomplete; the cure is to restart the antenna manager.
Report on a problem with focus scans, April 3rd to 7th 2005
Ka-band GFM calibration problem Spring 2005
LO1 tolerance not set by config_tool (2004/2005)

Telescope Parameters
Available Instruments
- Frontends
  - GBT Gregorian Receivers, General Information
  - Special information and procedures for the new Ka Band system
- Backends
IF/LO Information
Calibrated noise diodes ("cals")
Timing at the GBT
GBT Gain and Sensitivity
GBT proposal information
Observing Software
- Astrid Script Guide
Observing Policies
- General Observing Policy
- Dynamic Observing Rules
Computer Use
- Available computers
- Taking your data home
  - SDFITS
  - Exporting GBT Archive FITS data files
Observatory contacts

Weather Conditions
- National Weather Forcast for Green Bank
- GBT High Frequency Weather Forcasts
- Recommended Wind Limits for good high frequency performance (scroll down to tables 1 & 2)
- How the weather affect GBT performance other than wind
GBT Observing Checklist
Standard Observing Procedures
- GBT Standard Observing modes
- Pointing & Focusing the GBT (the 'Peak' and 'FocusSubreflector' procedures)
- Mapping
  - GBT Mapping Planner
Balancing the GBT IF/LO and backends
- General rules
- Balancing using turtle
Pulsar Observing
- GBT Spigot Card
- Spectral Processor
- BCPM
- cGBPP
- CGSR2 (Private Machine)
- GASP (Private Machine)
Spectral Line Observing
- Spectral Line configuration tool
Continuum Observing
VLBI
- VLBI Observing Checklist
- VLBI Setup Summaries
User-supplied backends
RFI at Green Bank
- RFI Reports Table
- PF340 RFI check (28 April, 2005)

General Information - What tools are available?
Fully Supported Software
- Real Time Data Display Tools:
  - iards (an aips++ package for spectral line observing with 1 or 2 polarizations)
  - Summer 2004: GFM is being updated with spectral line data processing for all standard observing modes.
- Offline analysis tools:
Beta Release Software
- None
Unsupported Software
- Real Time Display Tools:
  - GFM spectral line plugin. Only displays bandpasses.
  - rt_idl (a real time idl display developed by Glen Langston)
  - spectrometer (a real time, and offline, display tool for data from the autocorrelation spectrometer devloped by Glen Langston and Jeff Hagen)
- Offline analysis tools:
  - Tom Bania's IDL analysis package
  - Rick Fisher's 'Do-It-Yourself' analysis halp page
- Data summary and validation tools:
  - summary (provides a summary of the data in a given data directory; developed by Glen Langston)
  - validator (validates the data from a gbt observing run; developed by Glen Langston)
Data Reduction Techniques
- Combining GBT and VLA data
- Redcuing VLBI+S2 Data

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