GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting 9 July 2004 AGENDA 1. Observing News -- Ron 2. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines -- Roger 3. Spectrometer Status -- Rich 4. Software Status -- Amy 5. Project Planning Status -- John 6. Any other Business REPORTS 1. Observing News It's been a busy support week with nine observing projects in 17 observing sessions plus one observing sessions with the summer students. There was only 12 hours assigned for tests (PTCS, SDD, and receiver checkouts) and three maintenance days. About 120 hours went to astronomy. Almost all of the significant difficulties and lost time were related to observing with the Spectrometer's spigot card. One pulsar project (1A78) may have been lost due to severe RFI. The major categories of problems were: Spigot - file permissions : 0.3 hrs - Human 1 hr - Setup (human and software) : 2.2 hrs Spectral Processor Software : 0.8 hrs BCPM (Software?): 0.7 hrs Misc Software : 0.4 hrs The percentage of lost time due to failures was still low at about 5%. The average setup time (45 minutes) was larger this week than in the last few, also because of the typical difficulties in using the spigot card. In some cases it's not clear whether problems with the spigot were human error or systemic but it's definitely clear that improving the spigot interfaces, as planned, will help. We can expect support next week to be about the same as this since the number of proposals, and spigot observations, are about the same. -- RJM 2. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Operational issues: The S-band refrigerator failed Monday; it was replaced and cooled back down by Tuesday night. Mike Stennes made some changes to the LO Reference distribution system that seems to have stopped the "5MHz/1pps Sync" faults (two days with zero faults). Baselines: A demo 4-way power splitter unit has been received and is being evaluated in the system (in OR1). Q-band: A lot of effort is being expended to insure the receiver TP stability is good. Most of the cooled waveguide components were removed, cleaned, and carefully reassembled. The receiver is now being cooled to continue testing. Ka-band/mmConverter: Wiring of the five mmConverter modules continues. Four units are now completly wired; the fifth and final unit will require 2-3 more days to complete. The power supply/LO chassis assembly nears completion. The receiver LNAs are now returned from CV. R. Norrod 7/8/2004 3. Spectrometer Status Spectrometer Report 1 Jul - 8 Jul 2004 *****Operations***** It was a quiet week except for a few Data Interrupt faults and the spigot having some problems with the M&C version change. The Data Interrupt faults resulted in very little lost time. It's not clear why, but the script that should be executed to update the spigot software as part of a version change did not get properly executed. There have been lots of demands for upgrades and tests on the spigot. A firmware CRC has been requested for the calibration constants. The delay of the spigot relative to the BCPM needs to be better quantified. The double-nyquist modes appear to have broken and need to be tested. Histograms for 4-bit modes need to be checked with the artificial pulsar to confirm that problems seen during operation are due to RFI. However, there has been no time available due to the off-loading of data from the spigot. In fact, I completed about 45 minutes of setup on Tuesday only to find that the spigot computer was not available. Since there is no sign up mechanism for the spigot data off-loading, it is impossible to know when these can be run. It would be nice if we can get observers to sign up for this time on the resource calendar. *****Development***** A large amount of effort went into the testing of spigot timing. Small, very repeatable differences in the delays of various modes have been found. A report on the tests was completed. Some effort has been put into studying the lag step problem. After we looked into the data which had bad scans and did some tests on the system, we believe that the time required to write the data to the computer is at least one reason for ACF steps. Some effort is also going into the LTA replacement. A small amount of effort went into the Cross-Correlation Test Fixture. In particular, the layout of the circuit board that includes all four Bandpass-defining filters is about 50% complete. *****Plans***** Spigot: - Test spigot card firmware modifications. - Meet with pulsar scientists to decide what to do next with respect to testing spigot timing. - Continue work on absolute timing of spigot data vs mode. - Continue work on LTA upgrade. -- Rich and Holly 4. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #88 - Friday, July 9, 2004 This is week 2 of 6 in the fifth development cycle (C5) in 2004. The Plan of Record is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC52004. Observing API tests continued for a few hours each day this past week culminating in the expected release of the beta product after live testing on Friday, July 9. An Execution Block GUI has been created to shorten the learning curve of using turtle. Details on the Observing API, including its usage, can be found on the wiki at Data.ObservingAPIBeta. Contact Amy Shelton if you would like an overview of the documentation and the Observing API or have any questions regarding the Observing API. Joe has spent most of the week getting the flash drives for the CCU working under VxWorks. He is updating the kernel to VxWorks 5.3 and will require some antenna test time to verify the operation of the system after the upgrade. Melinda has finished her review of the Caltech Continuum Backend software interface document. Operational Support: + Joe examined the problems reported about losing control of the antenna. + Melinda examined and responded to reported config_tool problems that occurred in her absence. + Melinda looked into reported problems with the IF Rack laser controls. See her e-mail to gbtlocal for the details of her investigation. -- AS 5. Project Planning Status July 6, 2004 Planning Meeting Minutes Rm 137 10:45 A.M. [0] Observer comments & operator log items resulting in lost time: Operator's log comments Significant failures this week stemmed from: Computing: None Software: Config tool, getSpigotData not owned by root, Grail,Dynamic Corrections (During L band, so should not be necessary?), GO, GFM fit failures, Antenna Manager Amy will ask Melinda to follow up on the emails from last week. Some of the config tool problems were caused by grail, but it is unknown how many. Joe will look into the antenna manager fault reported. Electronics: 1PPS/5 MHz sync, 300 MHz, Spectrometer bad lags, Spigot card calibration, SP hung in stopping, None of this is unknown or new. Telescope/Servo: None. Other Problems from Observing Reports: F. Ghigo: VLBA experiment BU027C Lost time due to reciever change Config tool Antenna unwrap problem Phase cal stability G. Langston: Jacoby Pulsar observations AGBT03C Config tool problem AGBT04B Config tool Confusion over instructions 16_2X calibration problem (turned out to be RFI problem) AGBT04B_035, GBT04A_030, AGBT04A_035, AGBT03B_015 Calibration problems (RFI?) T. Minter: 4B-035 Config tool Observer's Request: The observers wanted me to convey that they would like the config_tool to default to the correct prime focus receiver (Rcvr_342, etc.) when g.receiver="PF1" is used (as is done in the config file examples). Frank Ghigo will decide if this is a good idea. It seems that specifying the exact receiver required is a better approach than defaulting to what might be the wrong receiver for the program. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Az bearing seal PM vs inclinometer calibration Monday? IR Measurements vs API testing Friday? Coordination with Pete, Amy, and Kim will be done to maximize the amount of time Kim can get at snow dump for thermal observations. [2] Observing Schedule discussions Carl is not here, so schedule changes must be done manually, and the Web schedules will not be updated. [3] GBT development planning Cassini support It seems that an agreement in principle has been reached to do this project. Informal analysis by Ford and Ghigo concluded that the mission will work without changes to our system, with the exception of a new VLBA backend (Mark V), which will be provided by others, and integrated into our system and tested by the VLBA technicians. Due to the high visibility of this project, we will make supporting the Cassini-Huygens mission a project on our chart of projects. [4] AOB None. -- JMF 6. Any other Busines