USNO VLBA Support Meeting

• Action USNO: Need to confirm ETA of availability of additional power from USNO power engineer. (New date is late May 2014)
• Nicole walked through space with power engineer and is now waiting on capacity (facilities and power talking) before going forward on integration. Hoping to have finite information within ~2 weeks. No firm estimate on completion until then.

• Correlator:
  • Status of Phase 2
    • Not much happening at moment. Phase 2 install is working well with no issues
    • Replace two SFPs - they have been ordered and should arrive soon.
    • Phase 2 planning: Understand contract is extended through August which would provide for 2 months assuming June install
    • Extension progress? Nicole: It has been approved last week (first 2 levels) and now waiting for level 3 approval. This will be a 5-year extension, and a lapse from current August extension needs to be avoided.
  • Other:
    • OS images: For a different correlator NRAO is refining a mechanism to maitain OS. James expects this effort to be folded into USNO correlator work and this would be done in June. This would have a minor boot impact. It refines how NRAO manages the OS image - no difference should be seen on Mark5s for USNO. This would extend to Mark5s which should simplify management.
    • Question: Would this change management of Red Hat? No, this is part of the existing contract which has NRAO covering Red Hat.
    • James will follow up after testing in NRAO equipment
• VLBA Status
  • Discussion of streamlining data delivery from backup VLBA intensives
    • ESATA SSD Installed at SC, preparing for install at LA
    • Next steps:
      • Complete install and initial tests at LA
      • Run trial write - who reads NRAO or USNO?
        • SSDs will be sent to USNO when tests done.
        • Action NRAO (Walter): Change observing script to allow hybrid observations
      • Complete instructions
  • Investigate the addition of another 2 VLBA antennas for new series of 4-antenna USNO observations.
    • Need update: how does data look?
    • USNO dealing with some incompatibles with root file output. For example: data size formats that their HOPS doesn't work with, issues with experiment numbers apparently missing,
    • Walter: We should set up meeting with Roger (Haystack). Possible key file setup implications
• Daily Observation Report.
  • MK issues throughout month due to weather and hardware
    • Ellipsoid deployment is now being monitored and will alert on failure
    • Not sure why day 20 was not re-observed. Peggy will look into this.
  • PT-SC observations done at end of month
  • USNO: Have been looking EOP solutions and have found a decent amount of outliers at the end of process. Might end up sending sniffer plots once the USNO pipeline is thoroughly vetted.
  • UNSO will look into any effect that may have same start time as recent RDBE personality change.
  • Walter: Look into pulse cal - there have been some reports that pulse cal tones may have added some noise to delay terminations. No real proof has been seen but we should be aware of the concern.
• Open issues
  • High Speed Contract Extension has been exercised - just a different contract line item number
  • Ephraim will follow up from NRAO contractual side.
  • James: Wanted to confirm no impact on data throughput after LambdaRAIL changes. It's possible that since last week ther might have been an improvement. USNO: No negative impact and thorughput is capped to provide room, so any increase would probably not be seen.
• Next meeting May 8th, 2014.