GBT OPERATIONS AND COMMISSIONING MEETING 04 February 2005 AGENDA 1. Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob 2. Observing News -- Ron 3. Scheduling Status -- Carl 4. Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger 5. Digital Electronics Status -- Rich 6. Software Status -- Nicole 7. Project Planning Status -- John 8. Any other Business REPORTS 1. Az Track, Antennae Report Az Track: * We have come to agreement with SG&H on the best method to perform some of the analyses recommended by the panel, and are putting a contract in place to do them. * Art has performed some analyses of the chevron joint/ baseplate arrangement. The results appear to explain the deformation we have found in the base plate surface. * I have discussed a deformed plate with the metallurgist, and obtained his recommendations on how best to straighten it without reducing our desired properties. Gadsden Tool is implementing these. No significant antenna activities this week. -- RAA 2. Observing News It's been a busy week with 13 observing proposals in 19 observing sessions. Test time this week was spent on Ka-band commissioning (6 hrs), PTCS (8.5 hrs), receiver checkout (2.5 hrs) and calibration (2 hrs), and software (2.5 hrs). Note that this is the first week Carl has been scheduling blocks of time for "General Tests". We had only one, 7 hr maintenance day, which leaves 139 hours for observations. Average setup time was the usual 40 minutes. Lost time this week, amounting to 11% of the time scheduled for tests and observing, again was mostly due to the weather. The breakdown of lost time is: Low Temperature: 12.5 hrs Timing Center Pwr Supply: 2.8 hrs GFM: 0.5 hrs Glishd/GO: 0.5 hrs All Others: 1.0 hrs This was also the first week that we have scheduled observations with the Q-band receiver. Glen had a slightly rough time, mostly due to the complexity of his setup then to anything intrinsic to the observing frequency. My observing with Paul Vanden Bout and Phil Solomon went off without a single bump. System temperatures for both feeds, both polarizations were about 100-120 K, about 25 K higher than what I would have expected. If time allows, we will show some preliminary data. -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last Week ========= Observations for proposals GBT05A-042, GBT04C-050, GBT04C-041, GBT04C-031, GBT04C-054, GBT04C-056, GBT05A-015, GBT02C-054, GBT04B-014, GBT04C-049, GBT04C-006, GBT01A-005, GBT04C-018, GBT04C-019, GBT02C-017 Completed proposals GBT04C-054, GBT04C-056, GBT04C-019, GBT02C-017 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for ** GBT05A-042 [F ] Andrew Baker HI Observations of Isolated Ellipticals GBT05A-021 [F B] Derck Smits Shock-excited OH (1720 MHz) masers in Herbig-Haro Objects GBT05A-011 [ B] Scott Ransom Timing of the Binary and Millisecond Pulsars in Terzan5 GBT05A-045 [ B] Suparna Roychowdhury A search for HI 21-cm line emission towards cooling flow clusters with 12CO line emission GBT05A-012 [ P ] Larry Morgan Ammonia Observations of Bright Rimmed Clouds GBT05A-034 [F B] John Hibbard Ultracompact Blue Dwarfs: Galaxy Formation in the Local Universe? GBT04C-012 [F ] Jennifer Donovan Deep Searches for Young Pulsars in ``Shell'' Supernova Remnants GBT05A-016 [F ] Jennifer Donovan Deep Searches for Young Pulsars in ``Shell'' Supernova Remnants GBT04B-026 [F ] Michael Kramer Timing the First Double Pulsar System BB202 [F ] Geoffrey Bower Trignometric Parallax of a Radio Star in the Pleiades GBT04C-037 [ P ] Yancy Shirley GBT & VLA Ammonia Thermometry Towards Low-mass Star-forming Cores GBT01A-005 [ P ] Barry Turner A High-resolution Spectral Survey Of Tmc-1 At Q-band GBT04C-028 [ P ] Claire Chandler A search for CCS in massive protostellar candidates and infrared dark clouds GBT04B-029 [F ] Ingrid Stairs Timing New Binary and Millisecond Pulsars from the Parkes Multibeam Survey GBT04C-006 [ P ] Paul Vanden Bout Q-Band Search for High Redshift Carbon Monoxide Line Emission ** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup Contact Information for 02/17/2005 - 03/03/2005 ======================================= Proposal PI Bands Email [NRAO contact] ---------- ------------------ ----- -------------------- GM059 Jon Marcaide X J.M.Marcaide@uv.es [] GBT05A-041 Paul Demorest L8 demorest@astron.berkeley.edu [Scott Ransom] GBT05A-010 Tim Robishaw L robishaw@astro.berkeley.edu [Toney Minter] BU030 Jim Ulvestad C julvesta@nrao.edu [] GBT05A-002 Vincent Fish L vfish@nrao.edu [Glen Langston] GBT04A-001 Paul Vanden Bout Q pvandenb@nrao.edu [Ron Maddalena] GBT04A-035 Ingrid Stairs LS istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Karen O'Neil] GBT05A-003 Bruce Campbell 4 campbellb@nasm.si.edu [Frank Ghigo] GBT05A-004 Dain Kavars L dkavars@astro.umn.edu [Toney Minter] GBT05A-038 Dan Stinebring 8L dan.stinebring@oberlin.edu [Toney Minter] GB053 Norbert Bartel L bartel@yorku.ca [] GBT04C-037 Yancy Shirley K yshirley@nrao.edu [Glen Langston] GBT04A-018 Tim Robishaw X robishaw@astro.berkeley.edu [Toney Minter] GBT04C-028 Claire Chandler K cchandle@aoc.nrao.edu [Toney Minter] GBT04C-006 Paul Vanden Bout Q pvandenb@nrao.edu [Ron Maddalena] GBT03C-028 Fabian Walter Q walter@mpia.de [Glen Langston] GBT03B-018 Yancy Shirley Q yshirley@nrao.edu [Toney Minter] Scheduled hours [backup] ======================== Category/Month-> February March April May Astronomy ~ 448 [196] 415 [198] 436 [191] 440 [196] Maintenance ~ 17 [101] 13 [143] 30 [111] 0 [136] Test & Comm ~ 193 [080] 262 [063] 202 [036] 215 [048] Un-assigned ~ 15 55 53 89 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 0 Active checkout - 14 On Hold - 8 Schedule - 57 Completed - 282 Current backlog [hours prior to 05A*] = 970 Total time to discharge [hours] = 2733 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 05A -- RCB 4. Microwave Electronics Status Operational issues: The C-band Model 22 failed late last week, soon after installation; it was replaced Thursday (the first maintenance day this week). There was a power supply failure in the Timing Center, and a step attenuator failure in CM16. A circuit has been designed and installed to positively remove power to the Phase Cal Generator via M&C. Functional tests have been done; additional checks with the spectrometer are scheduled for today. Ka Receiver - The assembly of a prototype microstip-WR19 adapter was delayed because it was found that a jig was needed. Amplifier bodies were received, and assembly of two to test is underway. 3mm Receiver - Preliminary RF testing of WR12 vacuum windows went well; gain and phase match looks good. They must now be epoxied and re-tested. Assembly of the cardcage metalwork was delayed due to some drawing errors; the shop completed rework quickly and we are now back on track. Penn Array: Steve is in Philly this week learning about the system. Other: We now have some working programs for mixer conversion loss tests (built in Labview). Will continue to develop them as experience with their use is gained. R. Norrod 2/3/2005 5. Digital Electronics Status Digital Electronics Status 20 January 2005 - 27 January 2005 *****Operations, Problem summary***** Langston reported a narrow feature that looks instrumental in some observations. Time has been reserved on 2/4 to investigate this. *****Development***** *LTA replacement: The printed circuit boards are being fabricated. The vendor is still on target to deliver assembled boards in mid-February. Effort here is being expended on preparing the plan for debugging/testing LTA, and modifying the firmware of the test fixture while waiting for the boards.  *Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: Testing of the first cross-correlation-and-output module was successfully completed. Work will begin on the second one very soon. The shop is about done with the chassis for the test fixture. We will begin assembling and wiring it very soon as well. *****Plans***** Continue LTA replacement and Cross-Correlation Text Fixture development. -- Rich and Holly 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #113 - Friday, February 4, 2005 Today ends week 5 in C1, the first development cycle of 2005. The Plan of Record is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC12005. Integration testing begins in earnest next week in preparation for a release of M&Cv5.1 on February 16, 2005. A new version of GFM will also be released around that time (specific date TBD) and a slightly updated Turtle. Significant efforts this week have gone into iterating on the developments for those two applications so they are ready for the full round of testing prior to regression tests next weekend.   Linux Migration work has been progressing at or ahead of schedule, and we are positioned to retire gbtaio1 after the upcoming release date. All gbtaio1 managers have been tested on Linux on a simulator; testing on the real system begins on Sunday. All that remains is to verify cabling requirements, and to take up the secondary task of making all managers that were formerly on gbtaio1 synchronous.   IDL work has focused on preparations for a visit by Tom Bania next week. Serving as the first external beta tester, he will run through cases and examples with the GBTIDL package under development. Development work this week has included going through the test cases, fixing errors and making improvements, and ensuring that all functions needed to reduce typical datasets are present. Once the internal/external combined team is satisfied with the results, the package will be opened up for testing locally here in GB later this spring, with the goal of a late May production release for use by everyone, including visiting observers. Operational support over the past week has included: * Joe responded to several servo az tranducer errors but found no software error; hardware problems are suspected * Ray resolved a problem Dana was having using the software simulator                                                                                                         --NMR 7. Project Planning Status January 31, 2005 Planning Meeting Agenda Rm 137 10:45 A.M. [0] Observer comments & operator log items resulting in lost time: Observer's comments received from: Adam Leroy, for GBT02C-017: We successfully obtained ~14+ hours on source (a z=6.3 quasar). We lost three hours during our initial night due to low temperatures with the temperature hovering at ~0.8F (just below the 1F cutoff). This lost time was made up in a free block of time a few days later. We will make sure that the standard operating procedures for low-temperature cutoff is followed. We encountered a software problem with the -online mode of sdfits which was fixed during our observing session and therefore had no lasting effect. sdfits and GFM did not successfully handle DCR observations at frequencies outside the nominal range of the Ku band, making processing of this data difficult. We observed at ~15.8 GHz, above the normal upper limit of 15.4 GHz. Because the DCR observations were just used for calibration, this did not have a major impact on our observations. Amy will add this problem to the list to keep it from being lost. Operator's log comments Significant failures the past week stemmed from: Computing: NTP Sync problems Joe, Chris and John are discussing possible changes to the NTP installation to make it easier to sync up the systems upon a restart. Software: Spectrometer manager failure, Trajectory failure, IF Manager failures The Spectrometer and Trajectory failures are well-known problems. The IF Manager failures were caused by interference from a cron job running a test. It was pointed out that restarting the antenna manager is not a cure for the trajectory failures. Electronics: IRIG transmitter failure, Timing center power supply failure, IIOP failure, C band refrigerator failure The IRIG transmitter and power supply failures were likely due to the overheating experienced when the chiller shut down. Telescope/Servo: Winds, cold, wheel seal leak Other: Chiller shutdown Bob and John are talking with Butch Wirt about ways to keep the cooling system on line in cold weather. It is vital that this system can work down to the low-temperature spec of the GBT, since the best weather for high-frequency observing is found at these temperatures. Other Problems from Observing Reports: None. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions None. Thursday is a maintenance day. Don't know about Wednesday yet, [2] Observing Schedule discussions Generic test time is scheduled this week. The time was allocated to Ron and Richard, with some makeup observing thrown in for good measure. [3] GBT development planning Effort requests are due Friday. Planning Meeting next Wednesday [4] AOB Low temperature stow procedures Bob will check to see that the procedures are consistently followed. Results from Bill Cotton's comments discussed last week: 1) Amy reported that the GFM crash was reproduced and fixed. It now reports an error instead of crashing. 2) Richard reports that he reproduced the problem with trajectories with changing accelerations. This seems to be a servo response issue. Richard has made trajectories with constant accelerations that work well for the purpose. We will send an official response to observers upon evaluation of their comments. -- JMF 8. Any other Business