Thursday, 9 am MT, 11 am ET, 29 September 2016

Logistics

Agenda

• 17A
  • PHT Status (Gustaaf, Barry, Rick)
  • TAC Meeting
    • Release PST (Dana, Rick)
    • Release Priorities, Plots, etc.
      • GBT (Toney)
      • VLA (Gustaaf, Barry)
      • VLBA (Mark C.)
    • TAC Large Proposal Telecon (Dana)
    • TAC Face-to-face Meeting
      • Logistics (JJ, Dana)
      • Technical Support (Gareth)
• 17B
  • CfP (Dana)
  • PST Requirements (Dana)
  • SRP/TAC Recruitment (Dana)

• PST Sessions (All)

• AOB

Minutes

• 17A
  • PHT Status. No work yet but we have time since the changes are required for the Director's review.
  • TAC Meeting
    • Release PST. No changes in the holdover proposals. MarkClaussen will add a new TAC member. Once this is done we should be ready to move the PST to the next review phase.
    • Release Priorities, Plots, etc.
      • GBT. ToneyMinter is behind schedule but this is okay since we will not discuss GBT proposals at the Large proposal telecon so there is time.
      • VLA. BarryClark generated the pressure plot. GustaafVanMoorsel should have the report ready on time.
      • VLBA. MarkClaussen is a little behind schedule. Some issues with the PHT. BarryClark will help out.
    • TAC Large Proposal Telecon. Some scheduling issues. The plan is to discuss the VLA and VLBA proposals for one hour and leave the GBT proposals for the face-to-face meeting.
    • TAC Face-to-face Meeting
      • Logistics. Since three TAC members will not be present we drafted an SRP member from HIZ to act as chair during the face-to-face meeting. So only two TAC members will be calling in remotely. JessicaUtley is working on travel etc. with the TAC members. The following will attend in person: BarryClark, MarkClaussen, GustaafVanMoorsel, ClaireChandler, ToneyMinter, and KarenONeil (first day). HeidiMedlin and WalterBrisken (first day) will be dialing in remotely.
      • Technical Support. GarethHunt will contact the two remote TAC members to check if they need WebEx and if they need to test out the polycom system. We will have both audio and video available.
• 17B
  • CfP. We tentatively agreed to the following plan. GBO and LBO will host the CfP web content and send out the email for the GBT and VLBA, respectively. They will contact DavisMurphy for technical support. For NRAO, all content must be finalized by 19 December 2016 (Monday) by 9:00 EST. The CfP will be released on 4 January 2017 (Wednesday) around noon EST, the first full day of the AAS meeting.
  • PST Requirements. Send any items to DanaBalser who will put these in JIRA. The plan is to discuss these at the next TTA meeting (6 October). RickLively will put out a similar test plan with a release near Thanksgiving break. No major Resource changes for the GBT (maybe a few VEGAS changes). There are two items for the VLBA. There will be some items of the VLA. Also, we have some carryover items from the user accounts system.
  • SRP/TAC Recruitment. There are 2 SRP chair vacancies and 14 SRP member vacancies: (0 EGS, 2 AGN JayLockman); (2 NGA, 2 HIZ DavidFrayer); and (0 SSP, 3 ISM, 3 SFM, 2 ETP MarkClaussen). Given the holidays we should start recruiting asap.

• PST Sessions. We discussed the PST requirements document to remove Sessions from the PST. Some comments below. We agreed that we need a full hour (at least) to discuss this further. The GBT support folks will work on a few use cases and send these to DanaBalser.
  • Optional Number of Sources. GustaafVanMoorsel asked about the purpose for the optional number of sources? This allows a user to specify more sources than they will eventually observe since we require all potential sources be included in the proposal.
  • Monitoring Interval. LorantSjouwerman felt we needed additional information for monitoring (e.g., irregular intervals). This can be captured in the comments.
  • Overhead Time. Several people were concerned how overhead was specified. LorantSjouwerman noted that this will depend on how one observes (e.g., short vs long scheduling blocks). DavidFrayer made a similar point for the GBT (e.g., short sessions will have a higher fraction of overhead yet sessions are no longer specified). He suggested using a additive term for overhead. DanaBalser and BarryClark think we should keep it simple and that a rough estimate of overhead is sufficient.
  • Source Positions. LorantSjouwerman asked how OTF maps are specified since they can extend over a large region and thus conflict with the elevation limit. This is true but we are not proposing anything different from the current PST.
  • PST-->PHT. There was some concern about how information would be exported from the PST to the PHT. For example, KarenONeil noted that the current Session info is imported into the GBT PHT and software automatically creates a DSS session. In particular, the min/max DSS session lengths are derived. This may be inconsistent with the overhead. At the very least we need to provide good guidance to observers. BarryClark also had similar concerns in exporting data into the PHT for the VLA and worried about the timescale to release this for 18A.