Ron and Toney have made progress in understanding vector calibration. A "new" method of calibration for frequency switched observations theoretically has the possibility to reduce observing time by a factor of two for a large number of GBT observations. Data to test this method with real observations was obtained early Friday morning and we will know more soon.

Ron has provided idl procedures for the reduction of scal measurements and their use in position switched observations. Toney is currently reviewing how to change these into more robust scripts that do all the error checking and fit the current style of the gbtidl getps. This is allowing Toney to learn the gbtidl code at the same time.

We are now two weeks late in producing the design document specifications on how the "calibration database" will interact with sdfits and gbtidl. Without emergency action we will not be able to make a request for programmers for the first quarter of 2008. Development of the gbtidl parts for calibration will not be affected by this and will continue to proceed. A workaround will be possible to get Tcal values from receiver files into gbtidl. Observers will not be able to save calibration information without the calibration database however. So the impact on the project is minimized if the calibration database programming resources do not become available until the second quarter of 2008.

-- ToneyMinter - 29 Nov 2007