GBT Operations and Commissioning Meeting 05 November 2004 AGENDA 1. Az track, Antenna Report -- Bob 2. Observing News -- Karen 3. Scheduling Status -- Carl 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines -- Roger 5. Spectrometer Status -- Rich 6. Software Status -- Nicole 7. Project Planning Status -- John 8. Any other Business REPORTS 1. Az track, Antenna Report Az Track * We had the grouting experts who performed the epoxy grouting test in 2002 come this week to inspect a recently discovered crack in the grout. The crack was found to only be cosmetic. * We continue with some followup analyses with SGH. * Art, Dennis, and Bob are all preparing for the panel review in December. -- RAA 2. Observing News Obs Report Oct 29 (0800) - Nov 4 (1900) -------------------------------- SUMMARY 9 observing proposals in 17 observing sessions, including 1 vlb project and 2 projects run remotely. 128 hours of astronomy, 15.5 hours of test, 8.5 hours of maintenence. Approx 8 hours (6%) lost to problems (plus 1.5 hours lost due to lost remote connection) ------------------------------ PROBLEMS SUMMARY (total of 8:12 lost + 1:26 due to remote connection problems): Hardware (6:51 lost): - Front end receivers failure on Rcvr26_40 - refrigerator temperature errors in software were set too low (1 hour lost) - LO2 out of phase (10 minutes?? lost) - DCR lost 10 MHz timing signal on start-up and had to be restarted (15 minutes lost) - Spectral Processor failed due to Rack A accumulator output FIFO overflow fault. (10 minutes lost) - Converter rack A lost +15V supply. Had to be (hard) rebooted (1:49 lost) - LO1 receiver module was bad and had to be replaced (3:05 lost) - Prospero died and had to be rebooted (22 minutes lost) Software (0:31 lost): - Turtle has to be restarted (10 minutes lost) - Software bug with dynamic corrections and a failed(?) temperature sensor (no time lost) - "Trajectory computation error" occured three times [error message "Failed to generate a stop trajector" (8 minutes lost) - Converter rack manager went into "unkown" state and had to be restarted with taskmaster (6 minutes lost) - Grail terminated abnormally and had to be restarted (7 minutes lost) Weather (0:50 lost) - Winds: time lost=50 min Other (1:26 lost) : - Remote network failed during spigot run, observer had to move to a different location (CV headquarters) (1hour, 26minutes lost) -- KO'N 3. Scheduling Status Last Week ========= Observations for proposals GM055 , GBT04C-030, GBT04B-022, GBT02A-066, GBT04C-055, GBT04C-012, GBT02A-069, GBT04B-028, GBT04C-008 Completed proposals GBT04C-030, GBT04B-022, GBT04C-055 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT04A-030 [B] PI Ingrid Stairs High-Precison Timing of Binary Pulsars at the GBT GBT04C-041 [P] PI James Braatz Monitoring Extragalactic H2O Masers Discovered with the GBT GBT04B-011 [B] PI Barney Rickett Scintillation studies of the J0737-3039 binary system GBT03C-031 [B] PI Bryan Jacoby Timing the pulsars in M62, NGC 6544, and NGC 6624 and Search for Ultra-fast pulsars GBT02A-066 PI David Hughes Breaking the Redshift Deadlock: The Spectroscopic Redshift of HDF850.1, the Brightest Sub-millimetre Source in the Hubble Deep Field GBT04C-012 [P] PI Jennifer Donovan Deep Searches for Young Pulsars in ``Shell'' Supernova Remnants GBT04C-056 [B] PI Paul Demorest Precision Timing of Binary and Millisecond Pulsars GBT02C-054 [P] PI James Braatz Measuring Nuclear Disks in NGC 1386 and IC 2560 (H2O) GBT04C-013 [B] PI Bryan Jacoby Precision Pulsar Timing GBT02A-035 [P] PI Min Yun Cosmic Evolution of the Most Luminous Submm Galaxies GBT04C-036 [B] PI Rajagopalan Ramachandran Searching for young pulsars in the Cygnus Super Bubble region GBT04B-026 [B] PI Michael Kramer Timing the First Double Pulsar System GBT04A-029 [B] PI Scott Ransom S-band Pulsar Observations of Terzan5 and Liller1 GBT04B-029 [P] PI Ingrid Stairs Timing New Binary and Millisecond Pulsars from the Parkes Multibeam Survey GBT04C-008 [B] PI Yurii Pidopryhora Mapping the Galactic Halo HI: Evidence of Outflow from the Galactic Plane? Scheduled hours [backup] ======================== Category/Month-> November December January Astronomy ~ 409 [255] 422 [194] 433 [303] Maintenance ~ 47 [026] 28 [077] 0 [136] Test & Comm ~ 223 [055] 188 [044] 253 [058] Shutdown ~ 36 36 0 Un-assigned ~ 6 71 58 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 0 Active checkout - 11 On Hold - 5 Schedule - 54 Completed - 242 Current backlog [hours prior to 04C*] = 1091 Total time to discharge [hours] = 2352 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04C -- RCB 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Operational issues: A question that arose during a VLBI run was investigated, and a problem with the phase lock of the LO1 synthesizers was found. The problem has been corrected, but probably compromised some runs over the past few weeks. There was a power supply failure in Converter Rack A, and a failed LO Reference module. They both happened on Wednesday night / Thursday morning, but were unrelated. Baselines: The addendum to EDIR 312 is completed, and will be released soon. Q-band: The receiver is to be installed today (Friday). S-band: The receiver was installed on Tuesday, and RCO reported no problems. An observer did later question an IF level change seen while observing, but we have not yet had the chance to investigate the report. R. Norrod 11/04/2004 5. Spectrometer Status Spectrometer Report 29 October - 4 November 2004 *****Operations***** Last Thursday, LTA S/N 7 was replaced by S/N 1 in an attempt to fix large steps in the lag domain. This resulted in a large number of data interrupt errors. LTA S/N 7 was put back in while improvements were made to LTA S/N 1. The improved S/N 1 was re-installed in Tuesday and has worked well ever since. The number of lag steps seems to have decreased. *****Development***** LTA replacement: Continued checking and modifying the LTA PCB. Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: The printed circuit board for the cross-correlation and output module is ready to be peer reviewed. Spigot: Escoffier sent up new firmware and a new Xilinx personality. The new firmware should cure the problems we had a few weeks ago with mode 42. The new Xilinx personality has a minor change in monitor points. We plan to test all this next maintenance day. *****Plans***** Test new spigot firmware and new Xilinx personality. Continue LTA replacement and Cross-Correlation Text Fixture development. -- Rich and Holly 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #104 - Friday, November 5, 2004 We are finishing week 5 of the seventh development cycle (C7) in 2004, which will run until mid-November. The Plan of Record is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC72004. Test efforts will go into high gear next week in preparation for a November 17th release. The biggest event this week is the one currently in progress - the disk crash that caused /users to fail. Because many SDD members' development sandboxes are on this disk, much of the work done in development on Thursday was lost, several other files and builds are corrupted, and it will probably take a couple more days of work to get everything to the point where it can be tested. Because we still don't know what files are OK and which are corrupted, the progress we report for this week may be punctuated. For example, because Grail is being used in a greater number of applications with the advent of increased Turtle use, we recognize the need to make this a particularly solid utility. This week, memory leaks were found and fixed. We hope that these changes were not lost. Turtle training for operators was held on Tuesday morning, and will be held for a limited number of test users in Charlottesville next Monday. We will have a training and discussion session here in Green Bank on Friday, November 12 in GB 137 from 2pm to 3pm. Interested astronomers and others should plan to attend if they will not be at the pulsar meeting. Those who will attend the pulsar meeting should let Nicole know so a second meeting can be scheduled to meet your needs. In other news, the MR for serial line improvements to the spectrometer has been written, and work for the initial phase of development is complete. IDL work also continues and the "lower level" of functionality (underlying the unipops layer) is nearly ready for testing by the project scientist. Work finally ramped back up on GFM for PTCS. This week's operational support included: * Responding to cascading problems from disk failure, most of which impacted the software development environment. -- NMR 7. Project Planning Status November 1, 2004 Planning Meeting Minutes Rm 137 10:45 A.M. [0] Observer comments & operator log items resulting in lost time: Observer's comments received from: None. Actually, there were some that John missed. Stay tuned next week. Operator's log comments Significant failures the past week stemmed from: Computing: None Software: Dynamic corrections, Spectral Processor hang, Scan Coordinator phase table fault, Transporter/Samplers on Wind, Spectral Processor scan number confusion, Grail/Turtled These are all known problems, except for the Transporter/sampler problems, and the Spectral Processor scan number confusion. Nicole will have someone look at these two items. Electronics: Spectrometer LTA card failure (DMA failures and lag steps), LO1/Phase cal frequency shift The LTA card that failed will be tested this week, and hopefully cleared for duty. The LO1 frequency offset will be tested this week, too. Telescope/Servo: Az Brake Fault, wind The electronics is the culprit on the az brake fault. Other Problems from Observing Reports: K. Oneil: Unexpected antenna motion using new API Nicole reports that this has been fixed. R. Maddalena: PF1 manager is non-synchronous. We ought to have this ported to a synchronous manager to eliminate confusion by observers and operators. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Q band installation was not listed this week. Gary A. Requested that it be done on the last maintenance day of the week. (This will likely be Wednesday, based on current weather forecasts) [2] Observing Schedule discussions Some backup time is available this week. [3] GBT development planning Cycle 8 Requests due this week CCB meeting Wednesday (1-2 P.M.) [4] AOB Phil will organize a Ka band meeting with Brian to discuss the status of the receiver and the possibilities for science this winter. Phil mentioned that the 43meter project will be starting up soon, with a project meeting scheduled for this week. Don Backer's EoR project proposal has been submitted to NSF, and will require some support from us if it is approved. -- JMF 8. Any other Business