GBT Commissioning and Operations Meeting 21 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 -- Karen 6. Software Status -- Nicole 7. Project Planning Status -- John 8. Any other Business PRELIMINARY REPORTS 1. Az Track and Telescope Status 2. Observing News We supported seven projects in ten observing sessions (one of which was a VLBI run, another a comet observations), spigot tests, Pf1, Q, and Ka-band tests, and a proposal checkout. The SDD had a few sessions of software test. Because of the increased number of hours for maintenance, we had scheduled only 70 hours for astronomy and 30 hours for tests. The lost time this week was again reasonably low. The major sources of lost time were: o Winds : 1.5 hrs o Spectrometer software : 1 hr o IF Rack hardware : 1 hr o Spigot Setup : 0.75 hr o Human (VLBI schedule) : 0.5 hr o Scan Duration (software & human) : 0.5 hrs o Other software : 1 hr This is about 6% of the time scheduled for science or tests. The average time to setup an experiment was 45 minutes. Since the average setup time has not changed over the last six months, I suggest we start thinking of ways to further reduce setup times. I'm a co-investigator on one of this weeks projects. We had to make substantial use of 'template' fitting to remove bandpass shapes. There's some practical 'experiences' with how one measures and uses templates that I think the support scientists and engineers may like to hear. If schedules allow, Toney and I will try to organize a little get-together for next week. -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last Week ========= Observations for proposals GBT04A-051, GBT03B-011, GBT02C-043, BB183 , GBT02A-069, GBT03B-015, GBT03A-016, GBT02B-005, GBT04A-008 Completed proposals BB183, GBT03A-016 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT02A-063 [P] PI Mark Claussen Water Maser Monitoring of Low and Intermediate Mass Young Stellar Objects GBT03C-031 PI Bryan Jacoby Timing the pulsars in M62, NGC 6544, and NGC 6624 and Search for Ultra-fast pulsars GBT04A-045 [B] PI Mallory Roberts Timing of Three Binary Pulsars Discovered in a Survey of Mid-Latitude EGRET Error Boxes GBT02A-046 [P] PI James Braatz Monitoring a Maser Disk in Mrk 1419 GBT04B-025 PI Bryan Butler Observing NH3 and OH in Comets Q4 NEAT and T7 LINEAR GBT03A-014 [B] PI Jay Lockman Halo HI Clouds: Distribution and Properties GBT02B-005 [B] PI Farhad Yusef-Zadeh Search for Positronium Recombination Maser Line Emission Toward the Galactic center GBT04A-019 [P] PI Chris Henkel Molecular Line Absorption in a Distant Radio Source May === Scheduled hours [backup] Astronomy ~ 357 [52] Maintenance ~ 123 Tests & Comm ~ 235 [12] 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 - 6 On Hold - 7 Schedule - 70 Completed - 177 Current backlog [hours prior to 04A*] = 1541 Total time to discharge [hours] = 2830 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04A -- RCB 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Ka-band and mmConverter: No news. Baselines: The test dewar has been reconfigured for additional measurements next week. Prep work for installation of LO2 buffer amps is underway. Other this week: At the request of PTCS, we did a LN2 Trx/Tcal measurement on the Q-band receiver. The results were not very satisfactory, and indicate linearity problems in the IF Rack -> DCR that badly need to be isolated and corrected. We hope to tackle this job next week. -- RDN 5/20/2004 5. Spectrometer Status Spectrometer Report 14-20 May *****Operations***** We had only two problem with the spectrometer this week. One interrupt error was recorded (May 15), with no lost time associated with it. We also ran into a known software bug, with the spectrometer failing once to configure because the integration time was set to zero *****Development***** We finally solved the problem with the 4-bit and 8-bit spigot modes this week. The problem was a bug in the data taking/calibration script which simply took a long time, and much effort, to track down. The bug fix, combined with the great tools the software group have given us (the analog filter rack/converter rack balance, the config API balance commands, and a nice lag 0 plotting tool), and the new spigot computer has allowed us to both release a number of 4-bit and 8-bit modes observers have been asking for, and also begin allowing remote observing on the spigot, for observers already familiar with the system. Holly continued work on the LTA design and upgrade. *****Plans***** Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: - continue work on the filter module Spigot: - we will begin testing a few 4-bit and 8-bit modes which David has the software written for - David has begun writing the code to unpack some of the 2-bit modes, which eventually will lead to opening modes both with 2 separate polarizations (we have only summed polarization modes now) and eventually, the cross-correlation modes. LTA replacement: - Continue schematic design & begin planning for LTA design review -- Karen 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #81 - Friday, May 21, 2004 Today ends Week 1 of 6 in the fourth development cycle (C4) in 2004. The Plan of Record which shows what you can expect in these releases is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC42004. Documentation showing results from our integration and regression testing, and other previous cycles release information, can be found at Software.SoftwareReportCentral on the wiki. M&Cv4.3 and GFM v4.3 were released this week early on Wednesday, after a small glitch in Tuesday's release activities where a latent bug was discovered in the IF Manager. This was rapidly identified, fixed, and the release proceeded. Highlights of delivered work for C3 include a new inclinometer manager, several updates to the Antenna Characterization manager that make it more reliable, a speed improvement to the active surface GUI and speed improvements to configuration coupled with responses to observer's reports. GFM has also been infused with significant speed improvements, and now reliably fits all good data in approximately one second and handles beamswitched data well. All release notes are at: http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/SoftwareReportCentral_ReleaseN otes Also, an alpha version of Logview is now available. Details on how to use it and be a tester for the SDD are on the wiki at http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Data/LogView Work has surged forward for C4 as well. Project Office Request #816, regarding the incorrect stow position for the subreflector servo, has ben completed. Melinda attended CCB meetings early in the week. The first integration version of GFM for the new cycle was made available for testing and is now under investigation. Two meetings were held regarding priorities for configuration and the observing API beta. Thus in early June, the first test runs of a Scheduling Block executor will be run. June 8th and/or 9th have been tentatively set to provide detailed overviews of all parts of the Data and Ease of Use projects. If you are interested in the context, direction, or details of these projects, please save the date. Operational support over the past week has included: + Upgrading the operating system on earth to fix security issues. --NMR 7. Project Planning Status May 17, 2004 Planning Meeting Minutes Rm 241 1:30 P.M. [0] Observer comments & operator log items to discuss Operator's log comments Significant failures this week stemmed from: Computing: None. Software: GFM, Grail, Antenna Mgr, Dynamic Corrections displays, LO1 power levels, SP hung in stopping, Spectrometer data interrupt failure w/ core dumps, BCPM Manager, GO, Weather Manager All these were one-shot failures except for the Spectrometer data interrupt failures. This needs some attention. Amy says that Mark and Joe are looking into it. John asked for an update whenever they finish looking into it. Electronics: IF Rack failure (YRB no power problem), K band monitoring failure A switch failed in the IF rack. The K band receiver has a bad MCB box. It was swapped out with a spare. Telescope/Servo: Weather Other Problems from Observing Reports: F. Ghigo: 3C2 1) The config tool does not set up for the "DCR_AF" case 2) gfm-test, when used at K-band for checking the focus, did not seem to work right when not beam switching, although it worked ok for the beam switching case 3) The Cleo save and restore was used, and we didn't remember at first that Cleo restores the previous scan number. (Ideally, Cleo shouldn't restore the scan number). Thus we had a few duplicate scan numbers, which confused gfm. Gfm, when trying to process the latest peak scan (for example scan 32), used the data from the previous scan 32 which was not a peak scan. So this points out an undesirable feature in gfm. G. Langston: 3C2 1) gfm-test does not display a TRACK procedure at all. 2) We tried to use config_tool to set up the K-band observation, but it failed, due to a fault in the spectrometer manager. We learned that it is absolutely critical the the observer first check that all mangers are functioning correctly before running config_tool. All of the above problems were noted, and most of them are already on the list of things to fix. Some other reports we got are that the after a VLBI run, the spectrometer manager contains a zero scan length, which confuses it. It must be manually set to a non-zero value before configuration can continue. This should be fixed in the spectrometer manager. The IF Rack and Config tool are boing changed to remove the smarts from the IF rack and put it in the config tool. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Day #1 - 4 OK. [2] Observing Schedule discussions Comet TOO discussions It seems that this week and next we are constrained by the elevation axle repairs. Carl will see what can be done, but not much if any room is in the schedule for supporting this. Backup time available for the 28th of May to June 1st. [3] GBT development planning Meetings Schedule Project presentation meeting June 15th, 10-12 Cycle 5 planning meeting, June 22nd, 10-12 [4] AOB Carl brought up the problem of the Web mirroring causing the GBT schedules to be behind, as the Web is only synched up once per day. Richard will talk to Gareth Hunt about what might be done. -- JMF 8. Any other Business