GBT Operations and Commissioning Report 17 December 2004 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 For the track, we are working on the list of recommendations from the panel. SG&H continues on some of the work previously authorized and is preparing a quotation for some further activities recommended by the panel which we can't do ourselves. We have also found some new cracks in old plates. We have two spares on hand. The plates from Gadsden have been delayed. Awaiting an update, but delivery will be after New Year's. Work continues on the 140', with the movement test soon. -- RAA 2. Observing News Over the last week we supported eight projects in 24 observing sessions. 140 hours was devoted to observing, 8 to PTCS tests, 13 to M&C tests, 5 to X- and Q-band tests, and about 9 to maintenance. Average setup time was 40 minutes. Lost time amounted to slightly under 5% of the observing and test time. The major causes of lost time were: Winds : 4.2 hrs Network slowness : 3.3 hrs Spigot/RFI : 0.6 hrs The network problems are relatively new and are making it very difficult to use standard utilities like Config_tool, Iards, GFM, CLEO, .... or most any command within the GBT network. Setting up observations is currently frustrated by the problem. Sometimes, a command like GFM will take ten minutes to execute within the GBT network but take 30 seconds on the GB network. We timed 'ls' commands as being 20x slower on the GBT network. Remote observers are having a very difficult time when this problem is combined with the traditional X-Window's latency issues. Various people have been called in to look at the problem and many have scratched their heads but no one I think has any idea what's going on here. I gave the 05A proposals their first round of technical assessment and we assigned a contact person for each. Most of the proposals can be scheduled without any checkouts. Those that require a checkout are almost all Ka-band proposals. The support scientist met this week and formed our January support schedule -- the new schedule will be on the web shortly. The upcoming weeks look like they will require about the same amount of support as the last few. Our support schedules and vacation plans have been arranged so as to provide adequate support over the holidays. -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last Week ========= Observations for proposals GBT04C-040, GBT03A-011, GBT04C-056, GBT04C-023, GBT02A-069, GBT04C-036, GBT04C-025, GBT04C-008 Completed proposals GBT04C-025 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT04C-040 PI Jean-Luc Margot The interior of Mercury revealed by its spin dynamics GBT02B-020 [P] PI Dominic Benford Search for Low Excitation Molecular Gas in High Redshift Quasars (CO) GBT03A-011 [P] PI Fabian Walter The Molecular Gas Content of Quasars at z~4.5 GBT04C-023 [B] PI Haydon Knight High Time Resolution Giant Pulse Searches GBT04C-058 [B] PI Scott Ransom A Search for Radio Pulsations from the Fast X-Ray MSP IGR J00291+5934 GBT04C-036 [B] PI Rajagopalan Ramachandran Searching for young pulsars in the Cygnus Super Bubble region GBT04C-039 PI Geoffrey Bower Searching for Radio Pulsations from X-ray Sources with Radio Counterparts in the Galactic Center BH128 PI David Hough Deep Imaging of Faint Nuclei in SCR FR-II Quasars and Radio Galaxies with the High Sensitivity Array GBT04C-008 [B] PI Yurii Pidopryhora Mapping the Galactic Halo HI: Evidence of Outflow from the Galactic Plane? Scheduled hours [backup] ======================== Category/Month-> December January February March Astronomy ~ 465 [082] 434 [315] 31 [008] 28 Maintenance ~ 62 0 [136] 0 [136] 0 [160] Test & Comm ~ 177 [017] 253 [058] 13 6 Shutdown ~ 36 0 0 0 Un-assigned ~ 5 58 628 710 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 34 Active checkout - 9 On Hold - 5 Schedule - 50 Completed - 252 Current backlog [hours prior to 04C*] = 871 Total time to discharge [hours] = 3266 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04C -- RCB 4. Microwave Electronics Status Operational issues: More work was done on the K-band R4 cable instability, and we believe the performance has been significantly improved. No new issues arose. Ka Receiver - Design work continues on a new LO Multiplier/Distributor module. A split-block waveguide splitter prototype (version 2), which will also serve as a high-pass filter, has been designed and submitted to the shop. A prototype microstrip-waveguide adapter design is nearing completion. Assembly work on the detector video amplifier boards got underway this week. 3mm Receiver - Work continues on the M&C specification and related circuit designs. Mike, Bob Simon, and a machinist are in CV Friday learning about fabrication of matched quartz vacuum windows. IF Amplifiers - Assembly and test of amplifiers continues. Three of ten units currently budgeted have been assembled. Two are in the operational system. R. Norrod 12/16/2004 5. Digital Electronics Status Spectrometer Report 10 December - 16 December 2004 *****Operations, Problem summary***** No problems this week! *****Development***** *LTA replacement: No report. Assume work continued on LTA firmware. *Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: o Design work is complete. Some drafting, construction, test, and integration are still required. o A chassis layout was completed and has been forwarded to drafting. o The drawing for the enclosure of the cross-correlation-and-output module is ready for engineering review. o The printed circuit for the front panel interface board is complete. o Construction of the second filter module is 90% complete. *****Plans***** Continue LTA replacement and Cross-Correlation Text Fixture development. -- Rich 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #109 - Friday, December 17, 2004 Today ends week 4 in C8, the last development cycle of 2004. The Plan of Record is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC82004, and focuses primarily on maintenance activities and other items which require less scientific support. Great strides continue to occur with IDL, where several additions have been made to the toolbox, and a major issue was resolved within the plotter allowing a "click" function to operate. Work is now being done to implement an automated nightly build, with email notifications on the success of unit tests and automated documentation updates. The project documentation has been drafted to a state that is consistent with the rest of the project, and is located on the wiki at Data.IDLMain - all IDL documentation can be accessed through this main location. Other work is also on schedule. A turtle procedure for multi-segmented scans is being tested. The BCPM can be balanced during a scan from within turtle, and can be turned on and off in support of pulsar observing (this change may not be released until Karen returns and sponsor tests). Spigot code is under M&C revision control, and during recent tests calibration was successful although datataking will not be attempted until test time during the last week of December. Regarding GFM, four items are being readied for sponsor testing next week: improved focus scan handling, user selectable acceptance criteria in the GFM heuristics, dual-feed observing, and lessening the sensitivity in fitting for high frequency observations. Several grail improvements have been made this week to support to move of all devices to linux, which should make this utility noticeably more robust after this cycle's release. Individual grail clients will no longer have the potential to interfere with one another, reconnections to managers are now handled much better, and timeouts are handled gracefully. These changes all ensure that grail performs well even when various parts of M&C fail. The simulator, which was a key activity this development cycle, is already beginning to pay dividends. Operational support has recently become much easier, and several problems can be resolved without using telescope or maintenance time. Operational support over the past week included: * Time spent looking into IARDS issue on 12/10, which turned out to be another network slowdown. We saw severe network issues during some of our test time this past week as well, and Joe has set up monitoring of the switches so that we can at least tell when the problems are occurring and when they are not. Chris and Gene Runion are also working on this. * A problem was discovered with the MM Converter while investigating a network slowdown on 12/16. As a result, the managers associated with this device have been shut down. Anyone running Ka tests should coordinate with SDD to get these started up for experiments and commissioning runs. -- NMR 7. Project Planning Status December 13, 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. Operator's log comments Significant failures the past week stemmed from: Computing: None Software: Antenna Manager hung in aborting (procedural error?), Grail/Antenna Characterization error (no lost time), config tool tests affected observing, DCR, Accessor/Grail interaction, spectrometer manager false messages (power off, etc.), GO/GFM/IARDS snafu (Friday morning), Active Surface errors, antenna trajectory errors (2 cases, both stopping) These are all known problems or not problems, and several of them will be fixed at the end of this release cycle. John noted that there was an interaction between Grail and the Accessor noted, and this is something new that should be investigated. Electronics: Spectral Processor setup problem, Spectrometer turned itself off, spigot distributions seemingly changing on their own, Active Surface IIOP The IIOP problem will be looked at during maintenance. The spigot group has deemed the spigo distribution changes as not a problem. Telescope/Servo: Wind over the weekend. Other: None Other Problems from Observing Reports: None noted [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Lower elevator work needs coordinated with J. Ray on QD work [2] Observing Schedule discussions Backup time is available over the weekend and next weekend, mostly in the dead of night. [3] GBT development planning Development planning with Project Managers Meetings continue to define our projects and process. Next meeting this afternoon to discuss a draft project list. [4] AOB MIT proposal for low frequency GBT observing needs to be estimated by Roger or Gary. Carl will provide the proposal to John ASAP. Chris Clark will need some downtime to replace the network switch in the equipment room. This will have to be planned and coordinated to reduce the downtime to a minimum. -- JMF 8. Any other Business