High Frequency Projects Status Summary
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(in lieu of September meeting)

I. 1cm & 3mm Rx/ Continuum Backend

The main new developments here have been with the Caltech Continuum
Backend (CCB); we had a PDR for this on Fri 06sep02.  Notes from this
have been sent out separately, and the consensus was that we can move
into the detailed design phase.  There has been good progress defining
software interaction protocols; we (BSM & TJP) would like to produce
use cases and at least nominal specifications of the software
interfaces by the end of this month, to be reviewed as feasible by the
GB software group and others.

Caltech has looked over my draft of the PDR minutes and agrees with
the conclusions.  These are the same as you will have received earlier, and
are posted on

http://wwwlocal/~bmason/gbt-dev/

also on this page is a start at the spreadsheet which Roger suggested
that summarizes interfaces.

II. Penn Array (PAR)

BSM talked to Simon Dicker on 09sep to get an update.  Penn has
received the test dewar and it looks to be in good condition; they
will be cooling it to investigate the pulse tube by early next week.
The He fridge has been delayed somewhat.  GSFC has designs for the
bolometers but etching has not begun; test bolometers will be provided
to Penn by the end of the year for lab use, although these will not be
the bolometers used in the final system.  The optics design has
proceeded to the point where the decision between quartz and plastic
lenses needs to be made, and it must be determined whether they or we
have the capability of working with quartz.  Simon & Brian also tried
without success to get the Penn & NRAO videocon systems to work with
each other in order to facilitate the monthly checkups suggested at
the progress report in Julyl; an internet-based system is going to be
delivered to Penn soon and we decided we could keep in touch via
email/telephone until then.

Penn has also applied for some funds (NSF) for filter development;
included in this proposal are some funds for realtime bolometer tuning
software.  Should these funds come through some burden on the local
M&C group will be alleviated, although we will need to coordinate
development.  This is still quite a ways off.

BSM has been working on data analysis algorithms and intends to have
something circulatable by mid Oct.  Mark Devlin has also put us in
touch with David Hughes & Ed Chapin at INAOE, who have an IDL-based
bolometer-array simulation package which looks like it might be quite
useful for algorithm development here.  They also have a simple
analysis pipeline which is meant to be general (it has been used on
SCUBA and early BOLOCAM [cso] data, and is advertised as intended for
use with SCUBA-II, BLAST, and BOLOCAM II [lmt]).  They have been
receptive to queries.

III. Other topics

Eric Sessoms has fixed the tipper analysis software and briefly
brought it online last week (NB that something over 50% of last week
had 86 GHz tau values ~ 0.1).  Hopefully this will be online on a more
permanent basis before long.  We will want this for K, and later Q,
band commissioning.