Attendance: George, Neal, Ryan, Des, Justin, Ilse, Mark
2021 Sep 29 @ 1400UTC
Logistics
Future Meeting dates (usually last Wed of the month):
2021 Oct 13 @ 1400 UTC Technical meeting (see first bullet under Development below)
2021 Oct 27 @ 1400 UTC Admin meeting (modulo ADASS schedule)
2021 Nov 17 (one week early, to avoid USA Thanksgiving)
2021 Dec 15 (two weeks early, to avoid holidays)
General Admin
General Status w.r.t. Coronavirus measures
NRAO/ALMA:
NRAO in North America now officially fully-vaccinated and "back to work", with masking/SD protocols still in place.
ALMA Santiago offices now open to staff on voluntary attendance basis; OSF/AOS staffing continues to increase based on careful review. Cycle 9 observing starts Oct 1.
ASTRON/JIVE
Science/computing staff continuing work-at-home for now? No! ASTRON (and JIVE) back to work @work, with some (experimental) teleworking continuing.
CASA Release Schedule
CASA 6.4.0: Early October (urgent for PL development/integration for ALMA Cycle 9)
CASA 6.2.1: Patch release on Sep 27 for ALMA Cycle 8
CASA 6.5 prioritization underway, due to Justin by Oct 11
CASA 6.5 development work to formally begin ~March 2022
Should assemble priorites conscious of items currently on 6.4 schedule, and particularly identify big-ticket items for 6.5 (most likely polcal with resolved calibrators)
Documentation and related
(Mark) Collated requirements (2021 July 02) ...status? Mark to finalize on timescale of 6.5 prioritization (Oct 11).
(Des/George) Fringefit memo...status? (TBD: George to add some general calibration context)
(Justin) VLBA CASA Recipe circulated; comments solicited/receieved
inp/go (mainly features of imp) still fascinates traditionalists....
(Ilse) CASA VLBI Paper planning? (E.g, to follow general CASA paper Bjorn is organizing?)
Narrowly-focused on VLBI, short, quick; referencing general CASA reference paper if timescales make sense.
Some casa6 development to be considered using new technologies ("CNGI tech transition"), if adequately isolate-able. Meeting Sep 30 to discuss in more detail.
Meetings/workshops of relevance
CASA Users Committee: Oct 11-14, including VLBI summary (Oct 12, 1600UTC)
ADASS: Oct 24-28
Other admin?
(Mark) Helpdesk recap
VLBI-specific helpdesk should field issues, make JIRA tickets as needed, coordinate through George to Jen/Urvashi to include in current development plan, and follow through with standard work-flows (verification, validation, etc.). In general, isolated VLBI stuff that will be coded at JIVE should be ok; broader work implicating NRAO staff (until we hire local VLBI developer!) may need some nuanced negotiation as regards urgency.
Development
We agreed that scheduling a ~monthly (optional) technical meeting involving George, Mark, Des, and Neal (managers not allowed!) would be a good idea, as it would give us a chance to stay connected and better-engaged in the actual development work, and cover ground that the usual administrative meeting can't easily support. I suspect we will also address logistical topics like work-flow issues and repo re-orgs and similar, as well, so that we're tending more to merely report on these things in the admin meeting. Nominal first meeting will be Oct 13 at 1400UTC (this does not conflict with CUC VLBI presentation), where we'll discuss scheduling future meetings (probably 2nd Wed each month).
(Des, CAS-13623, 12765,12553) Finalization of VLBI deployment in progress. Should move to formal verification and validation asap.
(Mark, CAS-13266) Per-scan interpolation via overloading per-obs mechanism. (6.4.1)
(George) Semantics of "Time Segment" granularity to be generalized by George, to avoid internal confusions.
Underway for 6.4.1
(Des, CAS-13361) Polarization combination for fringefit.
Des/George converging on approach via a TVI layer (cf frequency averaging)
(Des, CAS-13056) Overlapping solution intervals
Initial implementation awaiting review by George
(Mark, CAS-13003). EOP update (6.4).
Investigating using almacalc with Python interface.
Maybe a candidate topic for all-python, new-tech implementation?
Other/Miscellaneous
(Mark, CAS-13622) FITS-IDI filler does not always update OBSERVATION table correctly
Affects fetching of TEC maps for EVN data; fix and tests ready
Mark to set Fix version to 6.4. George to negotiate merge (pending ver/val test completion) to 6.4.0.
(Mark) Dysco ("lossy" compression of MeasurementSets, no ticket yet)
Integrated in casacore now; needs one-line diff in CASA to enable
Mark to make ticket (Fix vers=6.4), for likely inclusion in 6.4.1.
(George/Justin) to coordinate initial testing on CASR-463 (TEC) to better characterize basic requirements
(Justin) Initial tests of VLA-focused implementation with VLBA data work mechanically, mostly; line-of-sight TEC appears broadly consistent with AIPS dispersive delay, but quantitative details need attention, including behavior near/at/below horizon
(George, CAS-13287) AveragingTvi2 problems for certain conditions; under separate investigation (cf CAS-13466)
CAS-12485: OTF weight munging for solve (Can we complete validation and deploy? Des seeking interested users at JIVE)