GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting 23 July 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: Purported original wear plate material has finally shipped from Texas to the lab in Chicago. We should receive test results in a couple of weeks. Structural inspection: The field work should be complete by the end of next week. Telescope position will vary a good bit next week. Tuesday will be access all day. There are a lot of corrosion sites, but only one or two structural defects found. These were definitely due to poor quality in the original welding. Telescope: Work continues on azimuth bearing seal work and oil changes, and installation of modified motor blower intakes. -- RAA 2. Observing News We supported eight observing projects in sixteen sessions. There were four sessions of API tests as well. The schedule had fourteen hours of tests and 120 hours of observing. The significant problems were: Spectrometer/Spigot : 3.5 hrs GO User Table : 3.5 hrs Virgo Time : 1.5 hrs Grail : 0.5 hrs Lost time was just under 7% and a bit higher than in previous weeks. The average setup time was also longer (50 minutes) than in the last few weeks, mainly because almost all of the long setups were Spigot related. Observing over the next week will again be heavily Spigot oriented, with some of which running remotely. But the number of projects will be fewer than this week. Support efforts should be at about the same level as the last few weeks. -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last 3 Weeks ============= Observations for proposals GBT04A-030, GBT03C-031, GBT04B-011, GBT04A-045, GBT04A-046, GBT04B-001, GBT04A-035, GBT04B-024, GBT04A-047, GBT04A-003, GBT04B-035, GBT03B-013, GBT02A-046, GBT01A-078, GBT02A-069, GBT04B-005, GBT03B-015, GBT04A-029, GBT04B-028, GBT04B-029 Completed proposals GBT04B-001, GBT04A-047, GBT04B-035, GBT03B-013, GBT01A-078, GBT04B-005, GBT03B-015, GBT04A-029 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT03B-042 PI Kristy Dyer Continuum Reobservations of Galactic SNRs GBT04B-011 PI Barney Rickett Scintillation studies of the J0737-3039 binary system GBT03C-031 PI Bryan Jacoby Timing the pulsars in M62, NGC 6544, and NGC 6624 and Search for Ultra-fast pulsars GBT04B-024 PI Min Yun HI Survey of the Spitzer First Look Survey Galaxies GBT04B-036 PI Paul Demorest Precision Timing of Binary and Millisecond Pulsars GBT04B-026 PI Michael Kramer Timing the First Double Pulsar System GBT04B-028 PI Scott Ransom Multi-Epoch Multi-Frequency Scintillation Velocity Measurements of the Double-Pulsar Binary J0737-3039 GBT04B-007 PI Casey Law A Study of the Galactic Center Lobe GBT04B-018 PI Bryan Jacoby Precision Pulsar Timing Scheduled hours [backup] ======================== Category/Month-> July August September October Astronomy ~ 362 306 [014] 335 [154] 0 Maintenance ~ 208 214 210 0 Test & Comm ~ 154 146 [023] 163 [055] 0 Un-assigned ~ 16 78 12 0 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 0 Active checkout - 5 On Hold - 6 Schedule - 55 Completed - 199 Current backlog [hours prior to 04B*] = 1506 Total time to discharge [hours] = 2338 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04B -- Carl 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines Roger is on vacation. K-band switch is believed to be fixed (a defect in the switch control card). Work is progressing on other projects normally. 5. Spectrometer Status Spectrometer Report 16 Jul - 22 Jul 2004 *****Operations***** There was an intermittent problem with one of the spigot serial links. It was never reproducible during maintenance. Initially the cause was thought to be a communications IC that was not well seated in its socket. The IC was re-seated. However, the problem occurred again, during observations. Symptoms described by the observer then pointed to a "flaky" microprocessor. It was replaced and the problem has not recurred. About 15 hours of observing data was lost due a data-copying problem. Ransom copied data from the spigot2 internal raid to an external disk. Reasonable-looking files were generated on the external disk. However, after the files on the internal raid were erased, it was found that the files on the external disk were making the data useless. This was due to a kernel problem that is now understood. Ransom and O'Neil were able to write spigot data directly to external disk for the first time this week. The Firewire 800 interface was used. A sustained data rate of about 55 MB/s was observed copying data over this interface. The spigot generates 25 MB/s, so there is a safety factor of two. *****Development***** LTA replacement: Finished LTA schematic modification- the modified schematic has been sent out. The complete components list for LTA board is written. Need to get the price of the components to calculated the total cost in components. Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: The schematic for the filter module was completed and the board layout is 60% complete. Spigot Timing: Tests were run using the cal as an artificial pulsar to measure the relative timing difference between the spigot and BCPM in various spigot modes. Data has been forwarded to Ransom for analysis. *****Plans***** - Continue LTA replacement and Cross-Correlation Text Fixture development. -- Rich, Holly 6. Software Status Single Dish Development IPT #90 - Friday, July 23, 2004 This is week 4 of 6 in the fifth development cycle (C5) in 2004. The Plan of Record is available from the wiki at Software.PlanOfRecordC52004. Post-beta Observing API tests continued this week, and culminated in the development and tests of user-defined scans, breakpoints and balance methods. The schema for the observation management database was also developed. Details on the Observing API, including its usage, can be found on the wiki at Data.ObservingAPIBeta. Contact Amy Shelton if you would like an overview of the documentation and the Observing API or have any questions. In other news, analysis work has continued on MRs for PTCS. Additional options were added to GFM to make it easier to go on and offline, and an indication has been added to the menu bar. An error code was added to LVDT fault messages. Joe's data collection changes for the spectrometer (which will help the LTA investigation) are being slowly migrated in, but because the code was written a year ago, there are version compatibility issues which are being worked. X-Band manager changes have been made and are awaiting integration tests. We are waiting for MCB hardware to complete tests of the common MM downconverter, so unless this occurs by early August the testing activity may have to spill over into C6. The Penn Array meeting at Goddard which requested software attendance has been delayed as well. Operational Support: + None significant. -- NMR 7. Project Planning Status July 19, 2004 Planning Meeting Minutes Rm 137 10:45 A.M. 0) Observer comments & operator log items resulting in lost time: Observer comments from Paul Goldsmith: Observer comments were related to software. Problems with setup and data reduction were mentioned, with suggestions that we be sure to work with others that are solving the same problems. Most of the items mentioned in this report are known, and the suggestions given were along the lines of what is already happening. Operator's log comments Significant failures this week stemmed from: Computing: None Software: Setup failure (tuesday,no clue what exactly failed) (NLT), GO user table failure in az/el and LO1 test tone setup problem (4 hours), CCU date failure (NLT), Spigot problems (~5 hours) Electronics: Spectrometer/Spigot problems, CM 6 CM 6 was repaired. An attenuator failed. The spigot card had its microcontroller replaced, which seemed to fix the problems. Telescope/Servo: CCU date failure Joe Brandt will look into a permanent fix for this. Other Problems from Observing Reports: J. Braatz: GBT02A K band beam switch fault A hardware fault was corrected Wednesday of this week GFM request Will be added to the queue F. Ghigo: Pulsar setups dev_health.conf didn't seem to work Spectrometer 100 MHz spikes (setup failed) 1) Resource calendar schedule conflicts and discussions Spigot data offloading A scheduling problem. We discussed that we should ask for explicitely scheduled offload time when the observations are scheduled. This item may go away if we can begin dumping data directly to fast serial disks. 2) Observing Schedule discussions 3) GBT development planning Spigot software development discussion It seems inevitable that we will have to put more effort into the spigot system. We're hoping a miracle happens. SP screen for GO lite This was left out on purpose, but will be added in if it is not too difficult. Nicole will report on that. Spectrometer bad lags fixes The MR for this is being written IF Rack Lasers A change was made in the logic for the IF rack, and it proved to be troublesome to operation of the telescope. Software has been modified to account for th change in IF Rack behavior 4) AOB Planned refrigerator maintenance The Cryo group is studying this. It has been tried at VLA, Arecibo, and elsewhere, and has not borne fruit (at least not tasty fruit.) We had a short discussion about how to determine if a requested MR is a Godd Thing or not. Ford will write up a proposal for a screening process that will not add too much weight to the overhead. -- JMF 8. Any other Business