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A Penn Array project meeting was held in Green Bank on July 02 and 03 to review interface issues, which had been the focus of work in Q2, and to plan for the upcoming Critical Design Review. Throughout the quarter GB continued to assist in defining packaging and interfaces. This included a draft design for the RFI enclosure for the electronics, RFI measurements of the pulse tube cooler's stepper motor, receiver room vibration measurements, and providing a serial/optical converter designs. Penn drafted documents describing the software interfaces to the housekeeping and DAQ electronics. There are some grey areas in the DAQ interface and we plan to resolve these in collaboration with UPenn when the multiplexing electronics are operational in the laboratory.

Two major milestones were achieved in this period:

*With Roger Norrod's assistance, Mark Supanich from UPenn performed successful cryogenics tests on the GBT in late September. In these tests the Penn Array test dewar was placed in the GBT receiver room and run off the standard GBT helium compressor lines. Focal plane temperatures of 325 mK were achieved and held for the duration of the test (12 hours), during which time the telescope was slewed over a wide range of elevations all the way down to less than 15 degrees. There was no significant variation in the focal plane temperature over this time.

*In early September Goddard produced a mechanical prototype for the detector array.

A panel has been assembled and a Critical Design Review is scheduled for 17 and 18 October. Further effort has been focused on preparing material for the review.

-- BrianMason - 06 Oct 2003