Overall status: Recovery from power outage, spate of new software updates. Resumed science observing (with limitations) Saturday afternoon. Issues with filter gain settings caused issues with narrow band observations through Monday morning. Scheduling done via OST exclusively. Double maintenance day this week (Tues-Wed). Thursday morning discussion for spectral line group is postponed due to the HR benefits/open enrollment meeting at the same time (Momjian on Zeeman testing results - next week hopefully).
Key dates:
05 Nov: New Mexico Symposium
Pre 08Jan: Call for Proposals for February 2011 Call (first for new semester based system; tentative)
Brent visit summary: Work on graceful startup/shutdown of correlator; testing of fix for anti-aliasing completed and (nearly) confirmed; more testing this week. Work on test bench for boards (incomplete); next visit still being discussed.
CASA Update (new functionality available/issues/enhancements):Release expected by the end of the week; additional work ongoing with regarding to data handling (tiling). An issue was raised with regard to the error messages upon filling; the key information is generally before the highlighted errors.
AIPS Update (new functionality available/issues/enhancements): Appendix E update, available on AIPS page; will be update on evlaguides site by the end of the week. Updates to POLCAL. New sys power utilities (discussed later). Eric noted that he received only one reply to his newletter note inquiring about UVFITS users; currently, changes can be made which break other software but difficult to know who/what is being done.
Commissioning priorities for the week (McMullin, Chandler)
Double maintenance day week:
Resolution of Brent's visit. Done.
Resolution of narrow band observing restrictions. Done.
Science (planned Thursday-Friday day time observing sessions)
Other testing/issue resolutions.
Interrupt status for additional 3-bit testing
Commissioning Reports
Solar: Perley: Results of solar mode observing discussions with Tim
Also CCB; L band reverse coupler scheme (supporting full range of solar phenomena is moving ahead); Tim+community have also asked for support to upgrade the SCXKa with 20 dB coupler and solar cals (rather than just support the Ka band observing); this supports the active sun up to solar flares. Funding will need to wait until resolution of the 3-bit planning is completed. Plan for solar tests this week (initial completed). Note: Rick will also discuss travels at Science Tea today.
Calibration: Greisen/Dhawan: Switched power testing (follow-up)
AIPS is working with the switched power data; there are a suite of utilities:
SNPLT: plots SY table
SNEDT: edits uv-data, SY table and allows applying uv flags (for off source data).
EDITA: edit uv-data based on SY table
TYSMO: smooth/clip TY, SY tables
TYAPL: undo/do application of a particular SY table
Application of these leads to a variation of the average amplitude of .98-.99 (versus 5-10 normally). New information on this is available in the Appendix E.
1dB on/off tests
Noted that the first 1-2 records are not correct (jumpy values); need to be flagged. Otherwise this test performed as expected.
Note the identical values for different subbands issue (reported last week) has now been resolved.
Started: seeing some bad values on particular receivers (under investigation). Overall initial baseline for data is set though the methodology will evolve.
Array: Dhawan/Rupen: RF switch tests with rapid monitoring
Data taken but not yet analyzed.
In preparation
Polarization: Multi-band leakage/PA (Myers, Marvil): Not a priority but still needed; keep on list.
OPT: webtest of 1.06 capabilities/bug fixes (*); Deployed today.
Correlator: CBE averaging with restricted nodes
Calibration: Switched power tracking over several airmasses.
Polarization: Antenna cross polarization (Perley; Need script.); LSCX on 3C147; Scheduled for double maintenance day this week. Postponed until wideband X available on EA24
Spectral Line: Dhawan: Follow-up on frequency offset phase jumps characterization.
Spectral Line: Momjian: Zeeman test follow-upHigh frequency/low frequency results.
RSRO/ECSO Reports
Sent a clarification on key information to include; comments?
10B-154: Owen (first results)
Test data taken. Noted difficulties given the delay in scheduling which have shifted the project into the day time and required tracking ionosphere issues. Exploring polarization calibration - polarization will be meeting this week but key is understanding which calibrators (e.g., not 3C48) can be useful at which lower frequencies. More soon.
Greg - ran a test block with 20 min scans; was able to fill with OBIT so the data were salvaged and usable; still pending the green light to go ahead with program.
Satoko Takahashi (POC: Juergen Ott); area(s): continuum, mosaicing; 10B-126 (AT380): A Millimeter Study of the Embedded Star-Cluster in the Orion Molecular Cloud.
Hauyu Liu (POC: Juergen Ott); area(s): continuum, mosaicing
Frazer noted that the OPT/OST does not readily allow restrictions based on proximity to the sun. In addition, the current OST weather trending (phase for 10 minutes, wind for 2 hours) used for determining viability needs work. This will be kicked to the scheduling group for discussion/resolution. Some could be requested for development of 1.07.
Misc Actions
[McMullin/Frail]: %REDWrite up disposition of RR items.
[McMullin]: Confirm restriction of RSRO scan length at 90 s
[Owen]: Outline issue with 90s scan length restriction.
[McMullin/Durand]: Clean up outdated MainSaver issues.
[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 [Rupen]: X, Ku band subbands are inverted (IF 1 is labelled as IF4, IF2 as 3, IF3 as 2, IF 4 as 1). Noted that this had been tested but there were enough changes to warrant a re-do.
Med Priority [TBD]: Phase offsets within scans (phase jump at scan boundaries). R&L phase offset on some scans - probably L302 LO problem, needs tracking down. MR: Seen on EA07, EA25 (both RR and LL)
Med Priority [TBD]: Added. Phase change when frequency changes (needs to be tested).
Med Priority [TBD]: Anti-aliasing does not behave as advertised.
Low Priority [TBD]: First scan often bad.
Low Priority [TBD]: Phase (and amp) wobbles; long history.