GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting 23 April 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 -- Rich 6. Software Status -- Nicole 7. Project Planning Status -- John 8. Any other Business PRELIMINARY REPORTS 1. Az Track and Telescope Status A summary of the visit Monday by the SG&H staff and a brief summary of the state of the track project will be given. 2. Observing News Over the last week, we serviced 5 proposals in 8 observing sessions. About 100 hours went to astronomy and 55 hours to spigot tests, PTCS, program checkouts and calibration measurements. The average set up time was 35 minutes per session. There were interruptions due to winds (4), the network (4), hardware (2), and software (20). Our lost time was about 12% of the time scheduled for tests and observations. The lost time came from: o Elevation Drive (at least 4 hrs) o Prospero/Network problems (4 hrs) o Config_tool (2 hrs) o AFR/CR (1.5 hrs) o Spectrometer Hardware (1 hr) o Spectrometer Software (1 hr) o AntennaCharacterization/Accessor (1 hr) o Other software (GO,IARDS,DCR,Antenna,SpecProc,Clock,ScanCoord: 2.5 hrs) -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last Week ========= Observations for proposals GBT03C-030, GBT03C-031, GBT02A-069, GBT02C-012, GBT04A-008 Completed proposals GBT03C-030, GBT02C-012 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT02A-063 [P] PI Mark Claussen Water Maser Monitoring of Low and Intermediate Mass Young Stellar Objects GBT04A-022 [P] PI Toby Moore Variations in star-formation efficiency in the W3 GMC GBT01A-064 [B] PI James Cordes Search for Pulsars from Point Sources in the Galactic Center GBT04A-045 PI Mallory Roberts Timing of Three Binary Pulsars Discovered in a Survey of Mid-Latitude EGRET Error Boxes GBT02C-054 [P] PI James Braatz Measuring Nuclear Disks in NGC 1386 and IC 2560 (H2O) GBT02C-043 [P] PI Douglas Finkbeiner Microwave Emission from Spinning Dust GBT02A-046 [P] PI James Braatz Monitoring a Maser Disk in Mrk 1419 BK110 PI Paul Kondratko Follow­up Imaging of the Water Megamaser in NGC 3393 GBT04A-008 [B] PI Karen O'Neil New HI Galaxy Standards April ===== Scheduled hours [backup] Astronomy ~ 419 [64] Maintenance ~ 61 [36] Tests & Comm ~ 228 [9] Un-assigned ~ 12 May === Scheduled hours [backup] Astronomy ~ 401 [56] Maintenance ~ 88 [61] Tests & Comm ~ 208 [12] Shutdown ~ 26 Un-assigned ~ 21 June ==== Scheduled hours [backup] Astronomy ~ 221 Maintenance ~ 214 Tests & Comm ~ 100 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 0 Active checkout - 19 On Hold - 7 Schedule - 63 Completed - 168 Current backlog [hours prior to 04A*] = 1736 Total time to discharge [hours] = 3090** * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04A ** Does not currently include all VLBI approved for 04B -- RCB 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Ka-band and mmConverter: The receiver is now located in the Equipment Room and undergoing tests with the DCR and Spectrometer. Four detected continuum channels are connected into the DCR, and two IF channels may be connected into the GBT IF system via mmConverters. Other this week: Support for 04A-046 (GPS Observations) trials on Monday and Tuesday. Troubleshooting some Q-band receiver instabilities. EVLA feed testing in indoor antenna range. Work on reactivation of SAO maser, and cleanup of Timing Center. -- RDN 4/22/2004 5. Spectrometer Status *****Operations***** The good news is that we've made it through an entire week without a Data Interrupt Failure. The bad news and only significant failure of the past week was the failure of a paddle board. This is the first such failure since we replaced the paddle board connectors 18 months ago. Hopefully it's not the tip of another iceburg. *****Development***** Progress continues on the Cross-Correlation Test Fixture. Boards for the voltage regulators have been received and and one copy has been built and partially tested. The 800 to 1600 MHz filter for the filter module has been designed using the MicroWave Office software package. Some tweeking of the design is still required. A detailed cost estimate and cost to complete of the test fixture was completed. Cost to complete is about $2K. Kaplan and Lacasse conducted additional tests of the spigot 8-bit summed-polarizaion mode. The mode is still not working correctly and it is not clear where the problem lies. Chen continued working on LTA schematic design. *****Plans***** Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: - test the regulator - finish the 800 MHz filter design. Spigot: - Ray plans to come up and work on the true 200 MHz modes, both on the bench and on the system. - Additional work is planned on the spigot summed polarization modes and on testing new modes. LTA replacement: - Continue schematic design -- Rich and Holly 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #77 - Friday, April 23, 2004 Today ends week 4 of 6 in development cycle C3 in 2004. The Plan of Record is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC32004. Release documentation for our latest release and other previous cycles can be found at Software.SoftwareReportCentral on the wiki. PTCS represents the bulk of our activity this development cycle. Over the past two weeks, several items have been accomplished. Several GFM/DEAP items required by PTCS have been tested, and revisions are in progress. A significant amount of work has been done this week to make the Antenna Characterization manager more reliable. This manager in particular has helped us uncover several issues with the underlying M&C system which are being fixed, For example, the manager is now better able to respond appropriately to machine reboots and missing elevation values. MRs have been completed for the new managers for the inclinometers and accelerometers and these descriptions are under review. Operational support over the past two weeks has included: + Responding to software problems that have occurred in conjunction with prospero failures/reboots + Upgrading to the most recent version of the Ka manager for lab testing --NMR 7. Project Planning Status April 19, 2004 Planning Meeting Minutes Rm 137 10:45 A.M. [0] Observer comments & operator log items to discuss Operator's log comments Significant failures this week stemmed from: Computing: Prospero reboots, naiad reboot Chris reports a new kernel has been installed that should help alleviate the problem. Software: Converter rack, Analog Filter Rack, Spectrometer data interrupt failure, IF Manager, Antenna Characterization Most of the problems here have been fixed. A new problem with the antenna manager has caused problems today. Ron mentioned that it would be nice if we could figure out how to make our local observers guinea pigs for our new major releases, i.e. the port of converter rack/ analog filter rack to Linux. This might eliminate some downtime for visiting observers who have a harder time rescheduling if they lose time. In this case, it would be difficult, but not impossible, to have both old and new systems running at the same version level. Nicole will think about how this might be done in the future. Nicole and Richard will talk with Chris Clark about coordinating kernel upgrades on GBT machines. Electronics: Site Time Timing center TOD clock jumped by 80 microseconds. LO reference came unlocked. There was discussion about backup references for the sigma-tau maser. Right now, we have a rubidium standard, and the old SAO maser. A backup time of day clock / IRIG generator is in hand. Spectrometer Paddleboard failure, data interrupt failure, bad data (No data interrupt failures since newest version loaded Thursday) Spectral Processor Hung in stopping. DCR Missed Start Tick Ku band has a funny standing wave at about 23 MHz. Q band has a bad channel, with refrigerator modulation. Richard reported an additional intermittant Q band channel. Telescope/Servo: weather Observing Summaries F. Ghigo: PF1 800 MHz feed checkout The prime focus 800 MHz feed was installed recently, and some test observations were done yesterday afternoon. It all seems to work as well as before. G. Langston: Jacoby's AGBT03C_031_05 Pulsar observations. (Plus parallel CGSR2 data collection) Summary: remote observations appear successful. Minor issues There was not enough power on IF Rack driver 7 to provide enough power to the CGSR2. We used optical driver 8. The IF Manager would not compute the sky frequency and sideband values via CLEO, so we had to estimate the center frequency and sideband flips by doing the IF equations on paper. G. Langston: Nissim Kanekar's 855 MHz observations of quasars Project AGBT03C_030_02 Summary: observations on 2004 April 19 are running smoothly. Phil reported that his run has gone very well. Something to be put on the list is that Doppler calculations need to be applied to LO2 in the case of using multiple bandpasses at widely spaced frequencies, in order to keep the spectra aligned. It appears that just applying these at the start of each scan will do the job, even with the 1 KHz resolution of the LO2 synthesizers. This job needs to be carefully scoped out before any action is taken. [1] Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Day #1 OK. Day #2 OK. Note that Ka band is a critical activity this week. [2] Observing Schedule discussions Tim Weadon needs test time for testing the servo controller board out. Carl will schedule some time. Carl reminded us that he needs all test time requests for the October thru January timeframe by the end of next week. [3] GBT development planning Nothing of note this week. [4] AOB Plan for S-band (and other) Tcal calibration tests Ron and Roger will formulate more concrete plans for this, and will apply to Carl for time to accomplish the tests. Ron had 4 short items to mention: PF2's commissioning is laid out for May There has been no evidence forthcoming on the possibly bad K band channel. Ron has scheduled a meeting for Tuesday morning to discuss the system non-linearities that he and Toney have analyzed. Toney will distribute a paper before the meeting describing the problem. Of the non-spigot 4B proposals, only 3 or 4 need formal program checkout. One additional proposal has technical problems. Karen will comment on the spigot proposals that were accepted. -- JMF 8. Any other Business