GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting 21 November 2003 AGENDA 1. Az Track and Telescope Status -- Bob 2. Observing News -- Ron 3. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines -- Roger 4. Spectrometer Status -- Rich 5. Software Status -- Nicole 6. Scheduling Status -- Carl 7. Project Planning Status -- John 8. Any other Business PRELIMINARY REPORTS 1. Az Track and Telescope Status Track: Measurements of track deflections are in progress this week. A day was lost due to rain. Dennis, Art and Bob traveled to SG&H's headquarters in Waltham, MA this week and discussed progress on the finite element analyses. They have made some breakthroughs in the past few days, but still have a good way to go. They are still immersed in the mechanics of getting the models to run, and have not started looking at the results or implications. We may not see a milestone until January. The information they are creating is critical to our new design effort and decision process on the existing track modifcation approach. A lot of work will be needed by us once we have this information. Elevation Shaft: We have not received a report yet from M&M. We expect it any day. -- RAA 2. Observing News We serviced eight different projects this week, checked out a proposal, and tested the Ku-band receiver after it was installed. Most of the lost time this week was for high winds. The Spectral Processor was the most-used backend and gave us the usual problems once or twice a day. Antenna failures have been less then in previous weeks but still occurred about half a dozen times. We have multiple reports of Naiad, one of the computers in the control room, logging people off in the middle of their observations. As noted in various e-mails, the Ku-band tests showed two problems, both of which have been resolved. Frank noted a software bug in the IF Manager that was probably always present but had not been noticed before. And the receiver was mounted 180 degrees from that used previously. The software has been fixed and antenna's beam offset file has been changed to reflect the new orientation. Program checkout for project 2B16 went off well and I await word back from the PI's as to whether they are satisfied with the baselines. Tonight we start commissioning the recently-installed Q-band receiver. Wish us luck! -- RJM 3. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Q-band: The receiver was installed on November 20 and is available for use, although we have not yet had the opportunity to do very complete engineering tests. Cal values were measured in the lab, but are not yet entered into the database. K-band: Removed on November 18 to correct a refrigerator modulation problem in R1, and check operation of the beam switches which were reported to be intermittant by various observers. We met with engineers from Lincoln Labs on 11/18 to discuss support requirements for proposal 3C-001. This led to the need for some dynamic range measurements that were started this week. -- RDN 11/20/2003 4. Spectrometer Status The spectrometer worked reliably again this week. There were two minor failures. A failure that required rebooting on Nov. 14 was probably related to a higher level failure since the Antenna lost its RPC connection at about the same time. A second failure occurred on Nov. 15 when a Bank A: Data interupt failure message was generated. This was (surprisingly) cleared by Ron turning the manager off then back on. A bug in the spigot firmware was apparently squashed this week. This bug caused the spigot card to mis-interpret certain commands from the spigot computer. Ray provided some new firmware and Rich tested it out. Tests of the spigot system robustness were run late in the week. Results will be reported at the meeting. Tests of external disk drives mounted on the spigot computer were also conducted. It took about 4 minutes to show that the capacity of the interace to the disks was not sufficiently fast. Chris or Karen can hopefully provide more details. The process of modifying high speed samplers to see if their contribution to baseline stability can be reduced is continuing. This week filter components were ordered and work was begun on better internal cabling. More time was expended getting familiar with microwave office and with the filter design techniques taught by Brian Thomas last summer. The latter was motivated by a quote for filters for the cross-correlation test fixture of $462/filter (we need 8 total)! On the LTA re-design, Continue working on FPGA design,. Holly is still on track to finish the FPGA design by the end of the year. Plans for next week: More of the same plus supporting a spigot run on Saturday. -- Rich and Holly 5. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #60 - Friday, November 14, 2003 Today ends week 1 of 6 in the current development cycle, which is the 9th and last in 2003. The Plan of Record for the current development cycle is now available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC92003 along with the most up-to-date status information. M&Cv3.18 was released on Tue 11/18, along with the Configuration API v1.0beta. Release notes can be reviewed at http://wiki.gb.nrao.edu/bin/view/Software/ReleaseNotes_3_18.The SDFITS API v1.0beta will be released for review on Mon 11/24. Documentation has been prepared this week in support of Monday's release. A beta version indicates that at least one or two additional cycles will be required for astronomers internal to NRAO to evaluate and use the utilities before they are "officially" launched as a production capability. One of the key activities for this cycle is defining an API for observing, and conducting at least two live tests (one for a continuum observation and one for a spectral line observation). Frank and Jim have identified these trial observing cases, posted them to the wiki, and updated the input parameters for observing procedures in terms of "operations," which are building blocks for observations, and the procedures themselves. On the technical side, Amy and Mark have started identifying ideas for the high level design as they work to understand the problem in greater depth. An MR was written for a change to the Archivist to log LVDT temperatures by Melinda, and development was also completed this week. The change will be part of the next M&C release at the end of December. Operational support this week included fixing the filter polarity in the Ku-Band receiver, and applying a fix to the Archivist when it could not accept connections and was not writing FITS files. Additionally, changes were made to experimental programs not part of the recent release, when problems were discovered in them as a result of the release. This was necessary to support PTCS tests. -- NMR 6. Scheduling Status Last Week ======== Observations for: GBT02A-063, GBT02C-058, GBT02A-046, GBT02A-028, GBT02C-020, GBT02A-007, GBT03B-001, GBT03B-030 Completed: GBT03B-001 November ======== Scheduled hours [backup]: Astronomy ~ 302 [97] Maintenance ~ 99 Tests & comm ~ 284 [23] Shutdown ~ 36 December ======== Scheduled hours [backup]: Astronomy ~ 269 [200] Maintenance ~ 111 Tests & comm ~ 294 Shutdown ~ 36 Un assigned ~ 36 January ====== Scheduled hours [backup]: Astronomy ~ 346 [98] Maintenance ~ [132] Tests & comm ~ 159 [4] Un assigned ~ 239 Proposal Checkout queues ==================== Awaiting Checkout - 9 Active Checout - 24 Schedule - 44 On Hold - 5 Completed - 121 -- RCB 7. Project Planning Status November 17th Planning Meeting Minutes ** Rm 137 1:00 P.M. ** [0] Observer comments From Toney Minter on regression tests: 1) Software was not ready for the regression tests. 2) Antenna changes not ready for general use due to lack of training. 3) Configuration tool does not setup LO1 correctly for frequency switching. 4) Configuration tool will actually make changes while a scan is running. Item 2 turned out to be a feature that was added by mistake, and will not be a part of the release until further testing and training is complete. (mid cycle?) Items 3 and 4 are bugs that were addressed. Otherwise, just dull, uneventful observing last week. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Motion for az track measurements conflicts with K band removal and Q band installation. These receivers are high priority, and so win out. [2] Observing Schedule discussions None. [3] GBT development planning Software CME decisions Start porting the Converter Rack and Analog Filter Rack to Linux. This will allow us to eliminate the gpib and MCB errors from the system. Fix the "nod" GO procedure so that the rates change properly with observing mode. [4] AOB None -- JF 8. Any other Business