GBT Commissioning and Operations Meeting 18 July 2003 AGENDA 1. Az Track Status -- Bob A. 2. Observing news -- Ron 3. Spectrometer status -- Rich 4. Spectral Baseline, Front-end, and IF work -- Roger 5. Software status -- Nicole 6. Schedule -- Carl 7. Project scheduling -- John 8. Any other business Preliminary Reports 1. Az Track Status Azimuth Track effort: * We received the results of the additional metallurgical tests on both the old and replacement wear plates this week. They are not encouraging. We need to find a material with better resistance to fatigue. Dennis has found a suitable material, but it is very, very expensive. * We have the Phase 1 report from Simpson, Gumpertz, and Heger, and it is well done. We are addressing questions for clarification, and will be refining the Phase 2 criteria early next week. --- BA 2. Observing news There was no significant lost time this week during observing. The main item to report is the commissioning of PF2 last Saturday. We found about a dozen software and hardware problems. All of the significant software problems were resolved either that day or on Monday or Tuesday. The hardware/software problems that I don't think have been fixed but which users of the system need to note include: o Turning off the test tone in LO1 through the manager doesn't seem to work. Since this affects all receivers, everyone should look at the test tone setting and routings to ensure you don't accidentally add a birdie to your signal path. The SDD should drop an e-mail whenever this problem gets resolved. o Most receivers have the ability to display the noise diode on/off/external signals. PF2 currently does not. For now, one must look at a power detector to see the increase in power as the noise diode fires. o The PF2 Phase Cal/test Tone couplers have been installed backwards. Since the problem does not affect our commissioning experiments, this will be fixed when the receiver comes off of the telescope. o The PF Support Rack manager indicates the "Phase Lock State" is out of lock, which is only important for VLB-like experiments and not our commissioning work. This weekend, we hopefully will finish PF2 commissioning, do some horizon sweeps with the antenna and the PF2 receiver to explore the local RFI environment, and try another holography experiment. After that, we will be back to full-time observing support and have no other 'commissioning' activities for a few weeks. ---- RJM 3. Spectrometer status This week continue working on LTA upgrade. So far, it passed OBS, and test1 self-test on the system, but still has errors in self- test on the bench. Work continued on the hardware reset. There are still some firmware and possibly a hardware problem that needs to be solved. Some important strides towards a user-friendly spectrometer self-test capability were made this week. Ron and Amy have teamed up to provide a push-button self-test capability. This should make it possible for both users and engineers to run a self-test with one mouse click. Some testing is still required. Plans for next week: Continue working on LTA and hardware reset upgrades. Continue design of cross-correlation test fixture. Correct some documentation errors on the system monitor board. Test the new self-test mentioned above. --- RL / HC 4. Spectral Baseline, Front-end, and IF work 5. Software status Single Dish Development IPT #43 - Friday, July 18, 2003 This week begins in earnest a new development cycle. The upcoming release of M&Cv3.16 is planned for immediately after the summer school, on or about 8/18/03. The Plan of Record for the next development cycle is now available from the Project Office web site at http://tryllium.gb.nrao.edu/docs/POR/POR_July03.pdf. Activities for next cycle will include continued work on Data Export and Accessibility, the Ease of Use Initiative, PTCS activities, completion of the current phase for the Antenna Test Range software, and other continuing maintenance and enhancement activities including the addition of a new quicktest for the spectrometer. Software from the previous development cycle, which was supposed to culminate in the release of M&Cv3.15 on 7/9/03, was instead released on 7/15/03 after repeated difficulties. Release notes were distributed to the gbt e-mail list and are also available at http://tryllium.gb.nrao.edu/release. Included in the plan for next cycle is the creation of a maintenance plan; such a plan will include a formal release process that will be aimed at eliminating our continued release problems. For the current development cycle, 2 of 6 MRs have been written and approved. The new spectrometer quicktest has been developed and is ready for internal testing, which will commence on 7/28. The 5000 samples per scan limitation on the DCR has been resolved, tested internally, and is currently undergoing sponsor testing. In support of the summer school, two data sets have been successfully imported into IDL from an SDFITS file containing GBT data, and is awaiting sponsor testing by Karen next week. The SDD is prepared to respond to additional changes that may be needed in support of PF2 commissioning that is underway this week. If large unexpected problems arise it is likely that one or more commitments on this cycle's Plan of Record may need to be preempted by the end of next week. -NMR 6. Schedule Last two weeks =========== Observations for GBT03A-014, GBT02c_023, GBT02C-059, GBT02A-012, GBT03B-015, GBT02A-030, GBT02A-028, GBT02C-060, GBT03A-006, Completed (not reported): GBT02C-019 July === Scheduled Astronomy ~ 327 hours Maintenance ~ 219 hours Tests & comm ~ 198 hours August ====== Scheduled Astronomy ~ 345 hours Maintenance ~ 193 hours Tests & comm ~ 187 hours --- CB 7. Project scheduling July 14th Planning Meeting Rm 241 10:00 A.M. 0) Observer comments Michael Nord Problems with RFI and setup After discussions, we decided that Carl would get with Glen and try to pin down the setup problems. We are actively working the RFI problems. 1) This week's schedule No conflicts Tim Weadon will work in some moving telescope test time when weather runs people off the telescope. 2) Next week's schedule 3) July Observing Schedule discussions 4) August Observing Schedule discussions Open up time for engineering? PTCS or local observers? SDS tests? The PTCS time might be profitable used for engineering work on PTCS critical path items. To be played by ear. We cannot support a radar experiment for the Summer School due to having to idle the contractor for a day. Would cost big bucks which we cannot afford. 5) GBT development process and program proposal review Set up matrix management talk. (Tuesday, July 22nd at 3:00-4:30 ?) Richard and John to set this up and get it going. Set up a project management 6 weeks review meeting (Monday, August 4, 1:30-4:30?) This is set. 6) AOB Perturbation of schedules due to inspection schedule. PTCS Baselines Painting Maintenance of other forms We discussed this and decided that the PTCS temperature sensors was the most critical project to complete prior to the August inspection schedule. Other things will be worked in as they come up. Painting will continue through September. We will try to figure out what maintenace schedule we need for September to recover from this problem. Spectral Processor problems We're not convinced there is anything different about the reliability of the SP. It may be that the interface board is going out again. We will keep an eye on it. Spectrometer problems The spectrometer has been behaving pretty well, with an occasional crash. A 100 MHz feature in the spectrum was cured by removing and reinserting a card. Not a good omen. RFI We're attempting to get a handle on the low frequency RFI. Much work remains here. --- JF 8. Any other business Glen will follow up with Nord to understand the origin of his setup problems. Glen reported on a very intermittent spectrometer problem which occurs once every many thousands of integrations with 1sec dump times. We speculated that he may be on the edge of the possible transfer rate. We noted that the 5000 sample DCR "fix" has resulted in problems in other areas, so this cannot be considered "resolved" as reported in the earlier report. There continue to be problems with 3.15 related to the IF Manager FITS files, and modifications which were made to support PF2. There may also be problems with the support of PF2 in the filler. RMP gave a quick report on this week's PTCS commissioning time. We have made beam maps of a calibrator with M&C versions 3.13 and 3.15, which appear to show a significant improvement as a result of the "trajectory/scan mismatch" bug fix. Details will require full analysis of the data. Also, X-band half-power tracking under good conditions appear to demonstrate that the antenna tracking performance is rather good. Again, quantification of this result requires further data analysis. R. Prestage 2003 July 18