GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting 30 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: Plate samples have not made it to the lab yet, but they are in the shipper's terminal in Chicago. New wear plates from 4340 material should be here the week of August 16. SGH is developing strategy based on last Friday's teleconference. We should have that any day. Inspection: The structural inspection is complete for this year. Results should also arrive soon. Only a few defects that need some priority - the rest are important, but are done as part of caulking and painting. -- RAA 2. Observing News We supported ten projects in twelve sessions, an above average support load. There were 90 hours scheduled for observing and 30 hours split between PTCS and API testing. The significant lost time was due to: o Spigot setup : 3 hrs o Converter Rack Hardware : 4 hrs o Converter Rack Serial Interface Cable : 1 hr o Config_tool (not ready for the CGSR2) : 1 hr o Antenna Manager Software : 0.5 hrs Total lost time amounted to about 9% of the scheduled observing and test time. Typical setup time was about 45 minutes, mostly because of Spigot observing. Tests with the CGSR2 are going well and appear to be almost complete in that they can detect pulsars but a few calibration and power level problems are still being addressed. Because about half of next week's projects are carry-overs from this week, I'm expecting we'll have only a moderate support load. -- RJM 3. Scheduling Status Last Week ========= Observations for proposals GBT03B-042, GBT04B-011, GBT03C-031, GBT04B-024, GBT04B-036, GBT02A-069, GBT04B-026, GBT04B-028, GBT04B-007, GBT04B-018 Completed proposals GBT03B-042, GBT04B-024 Next Week ========= Observations scheduled for GBT04B-010 PI Bruce Campbell 70-cm Wavelength Bistatic Radar Observations of the Lunar Highlands GBT03B-042 PI Kristy Dyer Continuum Reobservations of Galactic SNRs GBT03C-001 PI Anthea Coster Ionospheric Effects on Coherence Time Scales GBT04B-036 PI Paul Demorest Precision Timing of Binary and Millisecond Pulsars GBT04A-017 PI Lucian Crosthwaite A Search For HI Tidal Interaction Debris in the Vicinity of NGC 5253 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 ~ 389 307 [014] 335 [154] 0 Maintenance ~ 208 214 210 0 Test & Comm ~ 147 167 [023] 163 [055] 0 Un-assigned ~ 0 56 12 0 Proposal Checkouts ================== Awaiting checkout - 0 Active checkout - 5 On Hold - 6 Schedule - 54 Completed - 203 Current backlog [hours prior to 04B*] = 1456 Total time to discharge [hours] = 2227 * Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 04B -- CB 4. Frontends, IFs, and Spectral Baselines No report - Roger is on vacation. 5. Spectrometer Status Spectrometer Report 23 Jul - 29 Jul 2004 *****Operations***** No significant problems this week. *****Development***** LTA replacement: work probably continued. Have not caught up with Holly Cross-Correlation Test Fixture: No progress. Beach duty. Spigot Timing: No progress. Ransom was moving this week. *****Plans***** - Continue LTA replacement and Cross-Correlation Text Fixture development. -- RL 6. Software Status -- NMR Single Dish Development IPT #91 - Friday, July 30, 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. Work on the Observing API continued, following the schema for the observation management database which was developed last week. The present effort is focused on making the Observing API commands runnable in a Scheduling Block context. Details on the Observing API, including its usage, can be found on the wiki at Data.ObservingAPIBeta; details on the user interfaces being developed has been posted by Eric at Data.ObsPrepGUI. Contact Amy Shelton if you would like an overview of the documentation and the Observing API or have any questions. Nicole and Frank continue to iterate on the specifications document for an SB-based observing system, and this week worked on integrating source catalogs and considering special requirements for observing objects like planets and comets. In other news, analysis work has continued on data reduction cases. Jim has completed drafts for many of the fundamental cases, which will be made available for review by the end of the cycle. Next week, Bob will be determining what calibration building blocks are required in implementation to support calibration for all the basic observing modes. Porting is complete for the Switching Signals Selector and Ray's preliminary tests were all successful. More extensive tests will be conducted during integration and/or regression testing. Ray and Melinda will also port all receivers to Linux during the first two weeks of August, in preparation for a requirement for Ka band commissioning to persist certain data required for analysis in a receiver FITS file. Frequency conversions for the LO required by the Ka band receiver, which has been fully scoped out by Brian who also wrote the MR, has been deferred to early in C6. Operational Support: + None significant. 7. Project Planning Status No report - meeting was in quorate, so we cancelled. -- JMF 8. Any other Business Remember CV power outage next weekend - may affect internet access.