ASAC 5 September

Bally, Mardones, Morita, Testi, Cernicharo, Tarenghi, Afonso, Kohno, Hills, Wootten, Hogerheijde, Blain, Johnstone, Aalto

Pepe: sent names of assignments. Massimo: No Board meeting in August. Sent to key staff a memo asking for more aid in presenting and solving issues together with them. Chile recruitments include Paulina Volker who will oversee JAO-Board interaction. Next week the first annual review of the project. Monday and Tuesday, with the review team scheduling Wednesday. Review is based on progress since Garmisch, to seek delay, go over plans for 2008. The committee has three from NA, three from EU, two from EA. they will convene next year also to see progress. Presentations have been delivered to them, counting over 3000 pages. Construction progresses so fast it is difficult to cover. Early acceptance of the warehouse is expected, the rest of the labs next year. We have four antennas and the Vx No 1 and Melco no 1 are integrated with their BUS and panels are being placed on Vx. This weekend the second Vx antenna will arrive in port. In Europe the transporter is complete, there will be a ceremony delivering it the first week October, after which it will move to Chile. In December it will arrive at the OSF. Nutator and OPT are under contract or final design. Front ends are being integrated, an alignment problem is being studied in the first one, to be delivered to Chile. The second front end integration has begun, the centers for integration in Europe and Japan are under way. Backend preproduction racks are being tested at the ATF. A production review will be held in November in Santiago. Correlator progress is going well and they will shortly be sent to Chile. Computing IPT took over ATF at the beginning of September and fringes were re-established. This will continue until June next year with close cooperation with science. SI and AIV are engaged in completing recruitment, training and will shortly put it all together in Chile. Recruitments continue with about 80 people needed in the next months. The community day in Garching was very successful, as was today's meeting on surveys. The worldwide efforts to bring ALMA successfully on line are impressive indeed. Last week in Venice there was a cosmology conference at which the ALMA talk garnered great interest.

PC: Questions? You said software debugging continues at ATF and OSF. Who does this? MT: Computing IPT, also AIV, operations people all work on this. Operators are running the ATF now. Science IPT, particularly Alison Peck, have been working with Debra Shepherd to verify the software.

Charges Pepe reminded us of assignments: Please, find enclosed the list of charges assigned in the August 1st telecon to prepare the repport for the ALMA Board. Charge 3) Item 1) Amplitude & Flux Calibration (YAMADA) Item 2)Phase Calibration (BALLY + GUETH) Item 3)Band Pass Calibration (Susanne + Jacqueline) Item 4)Polarization (Cernicharo + Johnstone) Item 5) Pointing Calibration (Blain + Cernicharo) Item 6)Antenna location calibration (Gueth) Item 7) Antena & Electronic delay Calibration (Doug Johnstone) Item 8) Optic Calibration (Onishi) Item 9)Primary beam calibration (Cernicharo + Yamada) Item 10) ACA Calibration Issues (Kohno) Commissioning (Bally + Kohno + Cernicharo) Charge 2 ) Michiel with support from science IPTs

No 1 will be delayed. No 2 on correlators. MH: AW sent around a note on this along with material delivered to us. DJ: Question on mode 11.

Discussion of commissioning plan. Make most recent version available. MT: There was a discussion of this yesterday night. We would like to have the help of members of this distinguished committe. PC: Alison presented a discussion where she noted the presence of 18 people. I worry this is not enough. RH: The numbers get to about 30 at the peak. MT: We need some people in Chile, both at the OSF and remotely. RH: The core team is in Chile. I want a core fully dedicated to this activity. An aspect of support is from experts overseas. Bally to assess numbers of astronomers working on VLA CARMA SMA etc. Hills says it was about three people for the JCMT, but that was a different world. MH will work on SMA. Someone will look into CARMA. PC: We need to discuss the written report. First draft expected by about 20 September. We can discuss that at our next telecon. Feedback from ESAC meeting on 19 Sept.

Sci IPT report Community day was very successful at ESO. First weather station equipment is being received in Garching and will shortly be tested.

JA: ESAC f2f on 19 September to discuss charges. Preparing for that now. Additional points of agenda will also be considered--ARClet activities, APEX discussion, computing update. AB: ANASAC meeting. Funding issues were a major item of discussion. General support of funding accompanying observing time. A Working Group will be formed, including all astonomers in the US, to consider this. Also we adopted a more formal terms of reference. New Chair is Andrew Baker, Blain is NA Vice Chair. EASAC: Kohno EA f2f is 6 October.

Respectfully submitted, Al

-- AlWootten - 05 Sep 2007
Topic revision: r1 - 2007-09-05, AlWootten
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