GBT Operations and Commissioning Meeting 19 November 2004 AGENDA 1. Az track, Antenna Report -- 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 REPORTS 1. Az track, Antenna Report Az track: * Additional wear plates delivery has slipped to week of 12/10. * We had a meeting on site this week with Continental Fields Systems to discuss machining of the wear plates, review cost estimates for welding the joints, and alternatives to get the most for the money to be spent. Lots of work to do. * The team is preparing materials for the Panel review book so as to publish and distribute over the holidays. 140' re-commissioning * Analyses of the hydraulic fluid caused us to scrap it and order new oil. Old oil has been drained and is being disposed of. New oil and installation should occur week after holidays. Filters are being cleaned and re-installed in the system. * All brake packages have been refurbished and are ready to go. * New telephone extensions are being installed to facilitate start-up and emergencies. * An estimate was made for new door hardware to replace that removed for use elsewhere on site, and was too high. I sent them back to the drawing board! (Actually, what I said to Butch was, go get a screwdriver and bring back the ones robbed!, but we can't do that.) -- RAA 2. Observing News Over the last two weeks we supported 16 observing projects in 30 observing sessions for 210 hours of observing. The remaining telescope time went to software tests (30 hrs), maintenance (25 hrs), Ka and Q-band tests (25 and 21 hrs), receiver and program checkouts (15 hrs), and PTCS tests (12 hrs). Average setup time was 45 minutes. After ignoring problems during maintenance and software testing, lost time amounted to about 8% of the observing and the remaining test time. The major sources of lost time were: Winds: 4.5 hrs Inexperienced remote users: 3.6 hrs Bogus cabling file entry: 3 hrs Antenna Servo or hardware: 2.8 hrs Antenna software: 1.8 hrs Accessor: 1.3 hrs Computing: 1.2 hrs GFM/Turtle/Grail: 1.1 hrs LO1 Doppler Software: 1 hr Converter Rack Power Supply: 0.8 hrs All others: 0.4 hrs The next two weeks should be relatively quiet as we have few projects with long-runs and only a few tests sessions (Q-band and PTCS). The support scientist will meet later today to determine the December support schedule. Our congratulations to Karen, Paul, and young Maxwell! -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last 2 Weeks ============= Observations for proposals GBT04A-030, GBT04C-051, GBT04C-041, GBT04B-011, GBT03C-031, GBT04C-012, GBT04C-056, GBT02C-054, GBT04C-013, GBT02A-035, GBT04C-036, GBT04B-026, GBT02A-069, GBT04A-018, GBT04A-029, GBT04B-029, GBT04C-008 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT04C-051 [B] PI Brenda Matthews Probing Magnetic Field Strength and Geometry of the Orion Filament GBT04C-052 [B] PI Nissim Kanekar A Search for 21cm absorption in a high metallicity DLA at z = 2.462 GBT04C-032 [B] PI Kristy Dyer Large-Scale Polarized Emission in Supernova Remnant SN1006 GBT04C-012 PI Jennifer Donovan Deep Searches for Young Pulsars in ``Shell'' Supernova Remnants GBT04C-036 [B] PI Rajagopalan Ramachandran Searching for young pulsars in the Cygnus Super Bubble region GBT04A-018 [B] PI Timothy Robishaw CCS: The Molecular Magnetometer of Choice GBT04B-029 [B] PI Ingrid Stairs Timing New Binary and Millisecond Pulsars from the Parkes Multibeam Survey BB190 PI Michael Bietenholz Supernova 2001em: Does it have a GRB Jet? GBT01A-029 [P] PI Steve Eales A First Investigation of the Origin of Galaxies with the GBT Scheduled hours [backup] ======================== Category/Month-> November December January Astronomy ~ 429 [101] 444 [201] 448 [303] Maintenance ~ 53 [009] 28 [077] 0 [136] Test & Comm ~ 202 [021] 182 [045] 255 [058] Shutdown ~ 36 36 0 Un-assigned ~ 0 55 41 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 0 Active checkout - 10 On Hold - 5 Schedule - 55 Completed - 242 Current backlog [hours prior to 04C*] = 1037 Total time to discharge [hours] = 2172 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04C -- RCB 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Operational issues: The 12-15 GHz receiver refrigerator was replaced due to high cryo temperatures. No other significant problems. Q-band: Various receiver checkout and commissioning observations are on-going. Hot/cold load calibration data was taken last week. Analysis raised questions about the data in one channel (R2), and we need to repeat some of the hot/cold tests. These were rained out today. Penn Array: RFI box fab is completed. RFI testing is to be done; then the box will be shipped to U. Penn. We are looking at setting aside lab space for the receiver when it is brought to GB. R. Norrod 11/19/2004 5. Spectrometer Status Rich Lacasse is away and Karen O'Neil is on leave, so John Ford reported the following: o Some of the Spigot mode changes that had been backed out of the system because of some anomalies were put back in on Monday by John and Rich, and appear to be working well. o There were a few reports of bad lags in Spectrometer data, but those appear to be originating in the LTA cards, which will be replaced with re-designed cards in the near future. o The new LTA cards are just about ready to go out. A bid for manufacture was obtained, and was reasonable and within budget. It takes about 3 weeks to have the cards made. They will be populated either in Socorro or by an external vendor as we do not have the equipment to do this in GB. 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #106 - Friday, November 19, 2004 During this week, we made the transition from C7 to C8. The new Plan of Record is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC82004, and the new development cycle will be in effect until the end of 2004. New versions of the control system, AIPS++/DISH and GFM were put in place. Release notes can be found at the following locations: http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/ReleaseNotes_4_7 http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/DishReleaseNotes_4_7 http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Data/GbtFitsMonitorReleaseNotes4_7 You can also review the problems encountered, and solutions prepared, for all of the testing activities on the control system over the past week by going to the release notes and looking for the "Testing Activities" section. This week's operational support included: * Several responses to GFM problems in which corrupt data was the culprit. * IARDS launch command restored after new DISH put in place. -- NMR 7. Project Planning Status November 8 and 15th, 2004 Planning Meeting Notes [0] Observer comments & operator log items resulting in lost time: Observer's comments received from: Esteban Araya Summary: Successful observations at C band with the Spectrometer. A few suggestions were made for improvements to the system, and they have been noted. Operator's log comments Significant failures the past week stemmed from: Computing: Prospero died again. It has since been extracted from the list of necessary machines... Power strip failed under OCT in control room This was just a nuisance. It was replaced with another. Software: Antenna Manager Trajectory Computation Error, DCR Manager, Converter Rack Manager, Spectral Processor fault, Grail, At the next revision of M&C, the taskmaster config files will be changed to make all manager and coordinator tasks runonce, to avoid having systems restart with default values behind the back of the observer and operator. This does not apply to the antenna. The above faults are well-known. System failure, grail/turtle/antenna characterizations, antenna manager, Converter rack, BCPM managers, IFRack The grail/turtle/antenna characterizations problems have been isolated and will be fixed next cycle. The converter rack troubles are being worked on this cycle. The BCPM manager startup problems were solved by Karen, and it is hoped that someone has written down the magic sequence of steps. The IFRack autoconfiguration feature seems to be getting in the way of setups, and so may be removed. Electronics: Converter Rack power supply, LO Reference Receiver, temperature sensors Spectrometer/Spigot, power supply in converter rack The Spigot and Spectrometer gave Rich and John problems during testing, and led to spending a lot of time chasing a non-existant problem due to misinterpretation of test data. A power supply fuse blew out in converter rack A, due to a larger than normal, but still within rating, load. The fuse was replaced by one with a greater rating. Telescope/Servo: Wind, Az brake fault, status board, bad connector We think that the brake fault is finally fixed, since a relay was replaced. The other problems were solved by replacing faulty connectors. Other: Lost time due to remote observing setup difficulties, model regeneration. Other Problems from Observing Reports: Other Problems from Observing Reports: Jim Braatz: not enough power in OD7 for observations, Microwave group will check this out. Spectrometer bad lags 12 bad integrations out of 3 hours. We will keep an eye on this. GFM got wrong directory This happens when the user starts up GFM before setting the directory when changing projects. It is not clear if this is what happened with Jim's case, but if so, then the obvious fix is to start GFM after all changes have been made to the system. K band t-cal values Ron and Chelen are processing data collected to refine the T-Cal values for K band, as well as other receivers. This data will be available soon. T. Minter: GFM problems -- all the problems reported were already documented. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions No conflicts. Need to change the spigot card firmware out 1st maintenance day. We may give up 1/2 of next Tuesday for astronomy if large impacts to projects can be avoided. [2] Observing Schedule discussions Backup time is available this week, and more is available in December. [3] GBT development planning CCB meetings on Monday afternoons. The Change Control Board is hereby renamed the Change Control Committee to avoid overloading the CCB abbreviation. Maybe we should have a naming contest. At any rate, the board's charter will be posted on the Projects wiki as soon as I get around to it. 6 week meetings Tuesday From 11 to 12 we will discuss the requests. CCC meeting quick summary John will write up the minutes of the CCC meeting, and post them on the wiki. The meeting this afternoon will deal wwith finalizing plans for the cycle, and discussing the IFRack autoconfiguration changes. [4] AOB Carl asked when a decision on the Penn Array Camera engineering tests will be made. Richard reported that a call will be made before the TAC meeting in December. Richard asked about the proposal to create three well-targeted mailing lists to replace the generic gbtlocal list. The group agreed with his proposal, with the exception that Ron wanted to reread it and make sure the instructions were explicit enough. Phil asked about the Q band bandpass, and what is causing the narrowed effective bandpass. John will consult with Gary on the receiver. -- JMF 8. Any other Business Scott Ransom gave a brief report on the pulsar workshop that concluded last week: Meeting minutes and a draft summary document have been circulated. Preliminary recommendations include - Build a dual 340/820 MHz feed for PF1 - Hire a data tech for tape backups - Work toward making GASP a publicly available backend Richard Prestage reported a couple of PTCS items: o Unused pointing models are being removed this week. o The failure mode of the temperature sensors has been traced to bad solder joints, a short wiring bend, and thermal cycling. These items have been addressed and a modified unit reinstalled. o A new PC has been installed in the control room for running MATLAB for PTCS, and in the future, Penn Array applications. Jim Braatz noted that although a new IDL machine was being installed in Charlottesville for external logins, we must find a way to get large volumes of GBT data onto the machine.