VEGAS Team Meeting

April 02, 2012

Attendees

CASPER Team:

• Dan Wertheimer
• Glenn Jones

NRAO:

• Jason Ray
• Galen Watts
• Randy McCullough
• Marty Bloss
• John Ford
• Mark Whitehead

Meeting Notes:

Observation Status:

This morning the team looked a pulsar in the Galactic Center at a lower frequency than the earlier observations. They should know if there was a successful detection within a day or so. The session ran well with Anish on site, but the remote team had no problem controlling VEGAS. If these data are good, GC observing may happen if weather permits. The 35% criteria (winter season scaling) represents the upper limit on weather conditions, but is acceptable.

Testing Status:

Status of the borrowed hardware, and the requirement of when things need to be returned.

• Roaches from Cal Tech (4) - {TBD after a meeting today) ~April 15
  • The remaining 4 roach #1s should be kept in the machines that best support the tests in GB.
• ADCs from Berkeley - May 1
• Hard disks - (TBD)
• 10GbE cables from Berkeley

The initial end-to-end tests (mgr -> GBTIDL -> GFM changes) went well with one remaining bug. This suite of testing needing needs focused effort, but tests can continue beyond the period when the first roaches are removed from the system, removing some time constraints.

Other items:

Schedule for hardware purchases - mainly drive by Roach 2 availabilities

An 8-sample yellow block exists but it should not to be counted on now. If we keep existing the existing 16 samples/clock and take every other sample and that will be good enough for Allan-Variance tests that Mark has planned.

Next steps:

• Finish Mode 13
• Port mode 1 to R2
  • then 1-4 to R2

There are likely to be a number of tests over the summer as Mode 13 id developed that will require access to the GBT IF, but not necessarily and specific source. It appears that these tests will coincide nicely with GBT summer maintenance activities.

-- MartyBloss - 2012-04-02