Overall status: In B configuration; 4-band dipoles are coming down tomorrow. Some issues with final antenna positions (baseline determination have been confusing for some antennas).
Meerkat staff visit status (Butler) - M&C group included their OPT, online system and correlator software; in the design stage.
Key dates:
09-23 Feb: 4-band test installation
16 Feb: Correlator Fire Suppression tests - Complete; worked 2 out of 3(!).
07-10 Mar: New Worlds, New Horizons (Santa Fe)
07 May - 15 Jun: 4-band science observing
Staff Travel:
Visitors:
05 Jan - 06 Apr: John Cannon sabbatical at DSOC
22 Feb - 08 Mar: Sonja Vrcic (Correlator)
28 Feb - 28 Mar: Bob Sault
Commissioning priorities for the week (McMullin, Chandler)
Double maintenance day week:
Mon
All day: Science Operations/testing observations
Tue
0900-1700: Testing/software development time
1800-0630: Science operations
Wed: Maintenance day
0630-1700: Maintenance operations
1800-0900: Science operations
Thu, Fri:
0900-1700: Testing/software development time
1800-0900: Science operations
Sat-Sun
Science operations + planned testing
Issues for Science Observing:
Correlator: fshift sub-band anti-aliasing causing phantom spectral lines when using recirculation for narrow bands (only worry if Michael has to prep your file)
Correlator: Missing/mislabeled scans in data sets (small percentage but recurring).
Correlator: time mislabeling in SDM data (non-synchronous operation between correlator dumps and CBE can require additional 1/2 integration time padding for online flags);fix available pending testing verification.
Construction: RFI sweep at Ku, K, Ka, Q pre-requisite for high pass filters for use with L301.
Calibration: Switched power heuristics for reduction.
Array/Construction: Dhawan/Rupen: RF switch issues; new set coming to be tested.
Correlator: Delay rocking across bands.
Correlator: Subset of BlBs misbehaving (only affects hardware stacking modes)
Antenna/High Freq: Reference pointing accuracy (C, X, Ku). Rick has noted that we are worse than before - larger fraction of observations indicate larger pointing offsets (Perley).
Array: Amplitude wobbles seen on subset of antennas; phase jumps at scan boundaries also seen on subset of antennas (Ka, Q bands only thus far).
Hardware status and updates (Langley, Perley, Rupen)
Looking at a public web-based observing log (searchable).
WIDAR (Rupen):
Notes: Update from last week: still an unresolved issue (BlB did not respond to a configuration from the CM, beginning with the RXP) - roll back confusion caused much of the rest. Some data issues over the weekend (one deformatter lost lock; one station board went bad for a period of time - being investigated today).
Working on 1 month timescale to prepare a report for a new drive system and deploy to one antenna, includes modifications to ACU, FRM and FRM motors. Have available pending funding but will be able to do array in a piecemeal fashion. This won't provide faster slew times but will enable faster settling so more time on source through observing (current number is about 6 seconds to settle can get down to 3-4 seconds).
Group updates (Low frequency, Spectral line, 4-Band wrap-up, Phased-array wrap-up)
Notes: From Adam: I've updated the testing log on https://safe.nrao.edu/wiki/bin/view/EVLA/PhasedArray with a fairly extensive summary of the activities of the last 6 weeks. Note that Paul and Scott did end up feeding the phased array data into dspsr (their coherent dedisperser / folder program) and got a nice pulse profile on J1939+2134. There's a plot on the wiki. This was on the recorded data - hopefully that gives them a good leg up to a real-time system.
Notes: Last test Monday morning. 60% of antennas are working (same response over ~30 MHz); bW centered at 70 MHz. Looking to buy low pass filters for all antennas - should improve things. Apr 27th have time before the science campaign to resolve outstanding issues.
Calibrator Models
Notes: Status
HPC (Bhatnagar/Owen/Golap):
Notes:
Imaging (Ott/Golap):
Notes: Meeting pending to discuss OTF mosaicing implementation.
[Frail/Butler]: Enable restrictions based on proximity to sun; review OST weather trending.
[McMullin/Frail]: %REDWrite up disposition of RR items.
[McMullin]: Review/recover metrics for Priority 0 items.
[Perley/McMullin]: SPW/IF/BB lexicon and mapper
Development of WIDAR guidelines document (Michael)
List of known problems (can be used by OSRO commissioning team (van Moorsel)
Med Priority [TBD]: Added. Phase change when frequency changes (needs to be tested).
Med Priority [TBD]: Anti-aliasing does not behave as advertised. - Sault visit * Low Priority [TBD]: Phase (and amp) wobbles; long history.fshift investigation.