GBT Operations and Commissioning Meeting 14 May 2004 AGENDA 1. Az Track and Telescope Status -- Bob 2. Observing News -- Ron 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 PRELIMINARY REPORTS 1. Az Track and Telescope Status * SGH and NRAO continue to revise action plan to explain wear plate problems. * Plate 45 is being replaced today (Friday). Will be cut up for metallurgy tests asap. * Repair activities for the elevation shaft begins today. -- RAA 2. Observing News It's a pleasure to give this week's report. Over the last week we supported eight proposals in thirteen observing sessions, PTCS tests, PF2 tests, Ka-band engineering tests, and software tests. A busy but not atypical week. About 60 hours were scheduled for the various tests and 100 hours for astronomy. Almost all of the lost time this week was due to human error. The major sources of lost time were: Winds : 20m GO (Human error): 60m Spigot (Hardware/Software, but mostly human error): 180m Spectrometer Software : 30m Grail : 30m All other : 30 m This is less than 4% of the time scheduled for astronomy and tests. The typical setup time was also low, about 30 min. -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last Week ========= Observations for proposals GBT02A-063, GBT01A-064, GBT03B-011, GBT02C-043, GBT03B-012, GBT02A-069, GBT03C-002, GBT03A-016, GBT02C-002 Completed proposals GBT01A-064, GBT03B-012, GBT03C-002, GBT03A-016 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT02C-043 [P] PI Douglas Finkbeiner Microwave Emission from Spinning Dust GBT02A-046 [P] PI James Braatz Monitoring a Maser Disk in Mrk 1419 BB183 PI Geoffrey Bower Intrinsic Size and Morphology of Sgr A* GBT03B-015 PI Scott Ransom Timing the Pulsars in the Globular Cluster M30 GBT02B-005 PI Farhad Yusef-Zadeh Search for Positronium Recombination Maser Line Emission Toward the Galactic center GBT04A-008 [B] PI Karen O'Neil New HI Galaxy Standards May === Scheduled hours [backup] Astronomy ~ 368 [52] Maintenance ~ 123 Tests & Comm ~ 223 [15] Shutdown ~ 26 Un-assigned ~ 3 June ==== Scheduled hours [backup] Astronomy ~ 313 [11] Maintenance ~ 220 Tests & Comm ~ 183 [15] Un-assigned ~ 9 July ==== Scheduled hours [backup] Astronomy ~ 328 [32] Maintenance ~ 208 Tests & Comm ~ 151 [8] Un-assigned ~ 58 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 0 Active checkout - 12 On Hold - 7 Schedule - 64 Completed - 176 Current backlog [hours prior to 04A*] = 1585 Total time to discharge [hours] = 2872 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04A -- RCB 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Ka-band and mmConverter: First light occurred on Friday May 7. Several observing sessions ran during the week, and initial impressions seem good, although detailed data reduction is yet to be done. Baselines: Experiments continue on Q-band components at a research level - a couple of reports are available to interested parties. Briefly, the initial results indicate that, except for very small bandwidths, the assumption that receiver temperature is flat with frequency is not at all correct, and will lead to significant baseline structure in many cases unless the variation in Tsys is calibrated out. Since the pressure from the mmConverter is off for a while, Bob Simon built several 9-18GHz MMIC amplifiers, four of which will be installed in 1-8GHz Converter modules as LO2 buffer amps. That configuration will be tested to evaluate the impact, if any, on the 60MHz baseline ripple sometimes seen in the IF system. Other this week: PF2 was commissioned as planned, and no issues were reported. PF1 was installed again on Tuesday. Lab linearity measurements on components in the common IF system are underway; major problems are not yet seen. More in-system tests will be done to continue the investigations into system accuracy. -- RDN 5/13/2004 5. Spectrometer Status *****Operations***** The spectrometer has been working smoothly this week except for a couple of data interrupt errors. One of these errors was probably caused by cron jobs starting on the earth computer. There has been some discussion about starting these jobs during maintenance times. Another error was traced to a logical error in the spectrometer program. The operator called when he saw this error. This gave the software group an opportunity to analyze the failure and find a fix for it. *****Development***** Progress continued on the Cross-Correlation Test Fixture. The second noise source was successfully tested. Progress was accomplished on both the 50 and 12.5 MHz MHz filters. Manufacturable designs have been generated and simulations are in progress. Some thought was also put into the design of the filter module, which contains all the filters. A 4:1 selector switch for this module was selected. Kaplan and Lacasse conducted additional tests of the spigot 8-bit and 4-bit summed-polarizaion modes. The modes are still not working correctly and it is not clear where the problem lies. Several hooks into the system have been identified and will be used in upcoming tests. They also tested the new spigot computer, spigot2. It worked just like the old one one the first try. The only fly in the ointment is that it did get a tic error in 10 minutes of testing. We have switched back to the old computer, spigot, until this problem can be resolved. Tests were conducted on the spigot mode. Using a primitive data acquisition routine, Lacasse showed that high numbered lags are not corrupted in the hardware as previously suspected. Kaplan will confirm this in some upcoming test time. Also, the spigot2 computer was tested in acquisition mode again. It was able to take about 8 continuous hours of data without a tic error while also running a low priority CPU intensive job. It's not clear where the improvement from last week came from. A few daemons on the machine were deleted and a different version of the acquisition program was run. A few attempts were made to record data at the same time as data was being off-loaded to removable disk. This failed almost instantly. The hope is that, when SATA disks are available, it will be possible to record directly to external disks. This would remove the current restriction on scheduling dead time between spigot runs to off-load data. Chen continued working on LTA schematic design. *****Plans***** Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: - continue work on the filter module Spigot: - Continue tests to isolate problems with 8- and 4-bit modes. LTA replacement: - Continue schematic design -- Rich and Holly 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #80 - Friday, May 14, 2004 Today ends the third development cycle (C3) in 2004. The Plan of Record which shows what you can expect in these releases is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC32004. Documentation showing results from our integration and regression testing, and other previous cycles release information, can be found at Software.SoftwareReportCentral on the wiki. Work this week has focused on integration testing, sponsor testing and readiness for the upcoming releases: --- M&C v4.3 is scheduled for Tuesday, May 18, 2004 PM --- GFM v4.3 is scheduled for Tuesday, May 18, 2004 PM --- Information about the tests that Dave has conducted this week is at http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/SoftwareReportCentral --- Jim will conduct regression tests this weekend Release notes for both of these releases are forthcoming on Tuesday. The notes will describe all of the newly available functionality. The new version of M&C will also be using updated Starlink libraries which were installed and tested by Joe this week. Also, Eric added automated regression testing to GFM based on some cases provided by Richard to streamline the process of adding new valid features. The AntennaCharacterization manager was moved from naiad to wind for improved reliability. This was one of 13 items planned for C3 delivery in http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/ModificationRequest11C304 and several other improvements are being incorporated into the release. Project planning meetings were also conducted this week. Priorities for the next cycle have been recorded on the new C4 Plan of Record on the wiki at http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/PlanOfRecordC42004 Operational support over the past week has included: + Data interrupt was reported on Wednesday; this was investigated by Joe and Mark. --NMR 7. Project Planning Status May 10, 2004 Planning Meeting Minutes Rm 137 10:45 A.M. [0] Observer comments & operator log items to discuss Operator's log comments Significant failures this week stemmed from: Computing: None. Software: GFM, Converter rack/analog filter rack , antenna characterization, DCR FITS server, Spectrometer data interrupt failure GFM problems are understood. Some of the problems are fixed in gfm_test, while otheres are manifestations of problems with the IF Manager files. The Converter Rack/Analog Filter Rack problems were investigated and a fix was patched into the system last week. The Antenna Characterization manager will be moved to a Linux server that is not used by users, which should increase its reliability. The DCR FITS server has just started acting up, and SDD is investigating it. The Spectrometer Data Interrupt Failure will be looked at, too. Electronics: MM Converter fuse blown, Ka band machinations, Telescope/Servo: Weather Unknown: K-Band dropout problem (6 hrs lost) Problems from Observing Reports: Spigot setup problems. The Web page with the instructions was enhanced to help better guide the setup. B. Mason, Ka Band Testing: 1) blown fuse on mmconverter power supply 2) Tracking LO was in the wrong sideband 3) GO had no Rcvr26_40 4) strange, seemingly spontaneous reconfigurations 5) IF manager didn't write useful FITS files for connections that go through the IF rack 6) GFM didn't work 7) bogus Y-axis Focus LPCs put into the system by GO #2 is fixed. The others are being investigated by SDD. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Day #1 OK. Day #2 OK. [2] Observing Schedule discussions PF 1 installation? PF1 will be installed *this* week. [3] GBT development planning Meetings Schedule Cycle 4 planning meeting May 11, 10-12 Richard admonished everyone to finish up the resource requests. Project presentation meeting June 15th, 10-12 Cycle 5 planning meeting, June 22nd, 10-12 [4] AOB Mechanical division is working on a design for the RFI station for the top of the GBT. It is in the conceptual stages right now, and will be added to the project list when it takes some form. -- JMF 8. Any other Business