From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Mon Dec 3 09:45:20 2001 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 09:45:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] ALMA US DH Teleconference Message-ID: There will be an ALMA US DH Meeting today at 1800 UT. Please dial 434-296-7082. Carolyn From awootten at NRAO.EDU Mon Dec 3 10:04:52 2001 From: awootten at NRAO.EDU (Al Wootten) Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 10:04:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] ALMA Configuration CDR Message-ID: <200112031504.KAA21487@polaris.cv.nrao.edu> Dear Division Heads, Team Leaders and Others, The ALMA Configuration CDR will be held in Socorro, N. M. on 24-25 January 2002. Details will be forthcoming at a later date. As you know, Division Heads are invited to attend a CDR, so please let me know if you wish to attend. We are in the process of forming the committee, and details of its membership will also be forthcoming, A campaign is underway now on the site to evaluate pad positions resulting from the work of John Conway (OSO), Adrian Webster (ROE) and Frederic Boone (Meudon). Next week, several engineers will examine access to the proposed pad positions, which center on Chajnantor-S and extend out from there to the 14km ring around Chascon. Any concerns which might benefit from exposure to the engineers or the site team should be addressed to Simon Radford asap. Chajnantor-S is located at: 627807 E, 7453229 N Coordinates, etc. http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/alma/site/Chajnantor/maps/coordinates.html Maps, etc. http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/alma/site/Chajnantor/maps/ Mask ftp://ftp.aoc.nrao.edu/pub/staff/bbutler/newmask5-new.FITS.gz Clear skies, Al +--------------------------------------------------------+ | Alwyn Wootten (http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/) | | Project Scientist, Atacama Large Millimeter Array/US | | Astronomer, National Radio Astronomy Observatory | | 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2475, USA | | (804)-296-0329 voice Help us build The ALMA| | (804)-296-0278 FAX {> {> {> {> | +----------------------------------^-----^-----^-----^---+ From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Mon Dec 3 11:33:39 2001 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2001 11:33:39 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] Message From Jaap Baars Message-ID: Dear Colleague Division Head/Team Leader, The AEC is in the process of preparing the detailed bi-lateral ALMA Project plan for the ACC. The material must be ready for transmittal to the ACC by 1 February 2002. Part of the material is the updated version of the Project Book. We need your help and participation in this process. As a first indication of the amount of necessary changes I would request each of you, and those within your sphere of authority who contribute to the Project Book, to send me within a week a short list of those sections of the PB which will need significant editing. The new, up-to-date text of your part of the PB is due by 7 January. The final editing will be done by me, for which I might return to you for further help during the month of January. I know that most of you don't look forward with enthusiasm to this task. But it is essential that we maintain an up-to-date PB and now that the Construction Phase has officially begun, this is as good a moment as any to realise this. Besides, the ACC requires the PB as part of the material for their meeting this spring. Thank you for your timely reactions. With best greetings, Jaap From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Thu Dec 6 08:06:48 2001 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 08:06:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] November ALMA US DH Meeting Minutes Message-ID: ALMA US Division Heads Teleconference Minutes - 2001-Nov-13 Attendees: Glendenning, Kingsley, Mangum, Perfetto, Radford, Rafal, Sramek, Webber, White, Wootten U.S. Funding Status ------------------- Rafal has no new updates on the funding status for the U.S. Both the House and Senate have passed the bill. It is waiting to be signed by the President. European Prototype Antenna Status --------------------------------- Kurz has announced that ESO may not continue the deal with EIE/Alcatel. Other options are being discussed. ESO is considering working with the Vertex contractor to conduct a value engineering study to reduce the production cost of the antenna leading to a second antenna which will meet specifications. ESO has already spoken with Vertex. The major change in the design includes replacing the machined aluminum panels with replication panels. This would provide lower cost production panels, but an equal quality antenna. If this antenna meets specifications, it would be disassembled and taken immediately to Chile. This would be considered the first production antenna. Replications panels are made by first creating a master blank, meteorological panel, which other panels are made from. At the moment, there is no answer on how they will reflect. A preliminary target date for the European Vertex prototype antenna is February 2003. If this antenna meets specifications, it could be on site in early 2004. Kingsley still feels very confident with U.S. prototype design from Vertex. Due to these activities, the antenna testing plan has been changed. We will not be comparing antennas. Glendenning wishes to actually have the interferometer to continue testing software, hardware, etc. Wootten suggest that we make sure all items are in good working order before taking them to the high site. Rafal explained that he does not necessarily agree with this. All the hardware at this point is in production mode; there is no reason to have crews at each site. Miscellany ---------- Webber asked how soon can some of the larger dollar amount items be signed off. Webber would like to get the money to UVA. Rafal stated that we should have information on cashflow next week. There will be an AEC meeting in Grenoble November 28 - 30. A draft of the bi-lateral scope should be worked out at this time. One item on the agenda will be for the AEC to consider how to deal with the cost growth in certain areas. We will need to maintain the scope of $552.5 M. Status Reports --------------- Antennas - Vertex is still holding to the current schedule. However there are issues with the panels and some slippage has been seen in the schedule. Gasho will be visiting the Vertex plant on Wednesday. We plan to have the encoder testing done in early December. The communication test occurred last month. Kingsley will contact Vertex about using photos of progress shown. Evaluation Receivers - Receiver 3 should arrive today. The machine shop is working on parts; we expect delivery at the end of November. The holography receiver should be complete by the end of February 2002. ATF - Instrumentation for the ALMA Test Facility is slowly arriving. Next meeting will be November 19, 2001 at 1800 UT. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ALMA US Division Heads Teleconference Minutes - 2001-Nov-19 Attendees: Brown, Glendenning, Mangum, Payne, Perfetto, Radford, Rafal, Simon, Sramek, Webber, White, Wootten There is no new information on the budget. The President did sign the the aviation security bill. However, we received the new increment from the supplemental funding we are receiving from NSF. Status Reports -------------- System - Sramek reported on the visit to the VLA site from Mitsubishi. The Mitsubishi representatives stated that they plan to begin fabrication in March/April 2002; ship to the VLA site in December 2002; start assembly in January/March 2003. They plan to have five Japanese on site and plan to hire 12 - 15 local contractors. Sramek then explained the current situation at the NRAO; he also gave them the yellow pages to begin looking for contractors in nearby areas. The representatives stated they would need to use the antenna barn for approximately six weeks; this is longer than we anticipated, and some options were discussed. The Mitsubishi representatives were interested in OSHA, safety rules, etc. Since all this material is described in the original proposal, they should contact Ukita. Sramek and the representatives discussed the foundation plans. We will charge NAOJ for the foundation cost incurred, including overhead, etc. The Japanese are in a very difficult situation at this time. The tower installation is out for bids. The AEC will be issuing a statement after the November meetings describing what the ALMA Project currently consists of. Computing - The Japanese have asked to be able to continue involvement in this area. Rafal stated that we will only want to invite them to PDRs, etc. The AEC announcement should make issues more clearer to all involved. Much effort has continued in the antenna simulator. The high level architecture document review is in the planning process. The bi-lateral re-negotiations with Raffi are going well. There has been progress in the joint web group. Front End - Payne submitted a metrology proposal to Kingsley and Baars. Evaluation Receivers - Assembly of the hardware continues. The quality of the machine shop in Green Bank is very disappointing. Shillue is having difficulty getting new lasers to phase lock. ATF - Mangum has requested new lab equipment for testing. This has not been dropped; no decisions on when it will be complete has been made. We are slowly receiving weather station information. Site - Radford is preparing for the next campaign on the site in December. All seems satisfactory at the site. Science - A configuration teleconference will be held next week. The configuration meeting will be January 21, 2002; at this meeting a decision will be made on the final configuration. Administration - Simon is working on organizing how we administratively move to Phase II in accounting, etc. Please send meeting information to cwhite at nrao.edu to be listed on the ALMA web pages. White has set up four new email exploders for use by all (NRAO and non-NRAO) division heads: alma_us, alma_e; alma_j; alma_c. almaadmin and mmadivhd are no longer activated. Plans to set up alma_nrao are in the works; this will include all NRAO ALMA employees. Once alma_nrao is created, we will remove mmawkrpt. Members are listed below. Please send cwhite at nrao.edu any corrections, etc. alma_us: aperfett at nrao.edu awootten at nrao.edu bglenden at nrao.edu bporter at nrao.edu cwhite at nrao.edu dsramek at nrao.edu ehardy at nrao.edu hliszt at nrao.edu jkingsle at nrao.edu jmangum at nrao.edu jpayne at nrao.edu jwebber at nrao.edu ldaddario at nrao.edu mbrooks at nrao.edu mrafal at nrao.edu pgray at nrao.edu rbrown at nrao.edu rsimon at nrao.edu alma_c: charles.cunningham at nrc.ca david.crampton at nrc.ca david.schade at nrc.ca lorne.avery at nrc.ca peter.dewdney at nrc.ca simon.lilly at nrc.ca wilson at physics.mcmaster.ca alma_e b.n.ellison at rl.ac.uk baudry at observ.u-bordeaux.fr dhofstad at eso.org ghtan at eso.org graffi at eso.org guillote at iram.fr jbaars at eso.org lnyman at eso.org rkurz at eso.org torben.andersen at astro.lu.se wild at astro.rug.nl alma_j chikada at optik.mtk.nao.ac.jp ishiguro at nro.nao.ac.jp kawabe at nro.nao.ac.jp kotaro at nro.nao.ac.jp morita at nro.nao.ac.jp noguchi at nro.nao.ac.jp seiichi at nro.nao.ac.jp sekimoto at nro.nao.ac.jp sokumura at nro.nao.ac.jp tetsuo.hasegawa at nao.ac.jp ukita at nro.nao.ac.jp From jbaars at eso.org Fri Dec 14 06:42:43 2001 From: jbaars at eso.org (Jacob Baars) Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 12:42:43 +0100 Subject: [alma_na] ALMA Week Message-ID: Dear Colleagues Division Heads and Team Leaders, on behalf of the AEC, I like to inform you that the next ALMA Week is scheduled to take place in Granada, Spain, from Tuesday 23 through Saturday 27 April 2003. The ACC is meeting the last days of the week before in Venice and we have decided to allow Monday for travel to Granada, beginning the Meeting on Tuesday morning. The meeting will continue into Saturday, allowing a Saturday night stay-over before return travel on Sunday. There are three flights daily on Iberia, both from/to Madrid and Barcelona. IRAM-Spain has offered to take care of the local arrangements, for which we are very grateful. As you will recall, the basic idea behind the ALMA Week is to combine in one place during one week a number of smaller, specialized progress or review meetings with a general meeting of all DH/TLs with the Management on all aspects of the ALMA Project. This will reduce travel time and cost for those who would have to attend several of such meetings and enables a wider dissemination of information than during separate small meetings. It is expected to hold the ALMA Week twice per year. Therefore all Division Heads and Team Leaders are requested to arrange upcoming discussion and review meetings in their area of responsibility in the time slot of the ALMA Week. To help us prepare the schedule and other logistic requirements of the meeting, the AEC invites you to inform us at your earliest possibility of your plan to arrange a discussion meeting during the ALMA week. You should give us the subject of the meeting, expected time duration and estimated number of participants. This will allow us to allocate meeting space and construct an optimum schedule. As a guideline, we should receive your preliminary announcement by 14 January 2002. Copy of this message goes to our Japanese and Canadian colleagues for information. I take this opportunity to wish you all a happy and relaxed Holiday Season. With best regards, Jaap From mrafal at nrao.edu Thu Dec 20 16:09:36 2001 From: mrafal at nrao.edu (Marc Rafal) Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 14:09:36 -0700 Subject: [alma_na] North America Frontend Reorganization Message-ID: <008401c1899a$a1885580$59dbc5ce@tuc.nrao.edu> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: FE Memo.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 10953 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Fri Dec 21 11:58:11 2001 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 11:58:11 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] Bi-lateral DH/TL Teleconference Minute - November 2001 Message-ID: ALMA Bilateral Teleconference - 2001-Nov-26 Attendees: Baars, Baudry, Brown, Chikada, Glendenning, Hasegawa, Ishiguro, Kawabe, Kingsley, Kurz, Mangum, Morita, Okumura, Payne, Porter, Radford, Sakamoto, Simon, Sramek, Tan, Webber, White, Wilson, Wootten Agenda: What does it mean to be a bi-lateral project? and What do we do from here? Brown states we want to make progress in the bi-lateral project, but also plan for the possible re-entry of Japan in 2004. Brown suggested that we need to set up a project the U.S. and European funding agencies will feel confident in funding. There is not an updated bi-lateral plan as of yet; we have to provide this to the ACC soon. The AEC will meet later this month to develop the plan based on the work that was done for the bilateral project nearly a year ago. At the AEC meeting all the project tasks will be assigned either to the North American partner or the European partner. This gives us yet another problem on how to keep viable the potential for later Japanese involvement. Brown's email message from earlier this morning outlined a plan for accommodating the current current situation. Baudry and Kurz see no problems with the plan. Brown states that it may be helpful to the Japanese if their funding agency could see that the Europe and North America have established a sound and well functioning project. The baseline project for our bi-lateral project is: 64 12-meter antennas with four frequency bands. Simon has converted the tri-lateral costing into a bi-lateral costing the AEC will review later this month. After the AEC meets, a draft will be sent out to all division heads and team leaders. Examples of the changes being implemented to return to the bilateral project: Japan will no longer share in the funding of the IPO; NA and Europe will split the site development cost; the transporter will again be the responsibility of Europe; there will be no enhancements in the front end sub-system beyond the initial 4 bands; however the bi-lateral partners could "sub-contract" front end parts to the Japanese and once they rejoin the project they could take over the responsibility. The back end subsystem planning needs a lot of work. The computing subsystem has been redivided and will be discussed with others. The system engineering and integration task, and the science tasks are now simply split 50/50. After the AEC meeting, the updated bi-lateral plan will be distributed to all DH/TL for their input on the technical plan, the cost, and the schedule. Webber provided a point of reference for the cost of a "second generation" ALMA correlator; he stated that if the EVLA correlator design using current technology were adapted to the needs of ALMA (i.e. 64 antennas) it would be only twice as expensive as the baseline ALMA correlator. The photonics development plan is being worked on by Payne in collaboration with the groups in Europe. He will generate a draft of the more detailed plan very soon. Kurz would like to have this before the end of the week. We will need to update the Project Book to reflect the current state of Project. Baars will be sending out information soon. The ACC will need to see our draft of the Project Book (along with much other material from the AEC) by the first week of February 2002. Status Reports -------------- Site Development - Radford will meet with Hofstadt next month to discuss the site development planning. A PDR is planned for July 2002. The RFQ for power studies has been released internationally. Antenna - Vertex is still holding the delivery date of April 23, 2002. Panel production is the key element in the critical path. The BUS is in production. All the major steel components have been fabricated and will be completed for acceptance test at the end of December 2002. The delta CDR and CDD material will go out this week. Kurz stated that the ECC has decided to go ahead with the updated Alcatel proposal; the new delivery date to the ALMA Test Facility is April 2003. The ECC has sent the updated proposal to the ESO finance committee for approval. Front End - Perfetto reported that the evaluation receivers have one dewar ready in the lab. The receiver cartridge parts are being made. The electronics for the receiver are coming along slowly. We will build receiver #2 in parallel to be ready in March 2002; then we will begin two months of testing. Webber is satisfied with the noise performance of the band 6 mixer. The re-designed band 3 SIS mixer design is finished. The CDL is working with the UVa foundry on getting the mask sets made. A new laboratory test dewar will be ready by the end of December 2001. Back End - The data transmission system prototype is making continued progress. The layout of the FO receiver card has gone out for bids. We will be ready for integration in January. The LO reference is nearing completion. The series of measurements on the LO switching appears to be satisfactory. Baudry made measurements on the 2 bit digitizer to verify that the sample signal is very clean. The final layout is due in mid December. We have not yet tested the 3 bit digitizer; we plan to test this in Grenoble. We have visited SDM to discuss production and a revised estimate for the production costs has been received. Correlator - There will be a meeting in Socorro to work on the interfaces. Work continues on collecting firmware to support the ALMA operational modes. We are going forward with the chip procurement and the rack design. Computing - The control software group is preparing for tests at theVertex factory in January. The next release of common software will be in January. There will be a meeting in Garching to to discuss and finalize the top level architecture for sub-systems to adhere to. The effort to establish a complete, mirrored, bi-lateral web has been restarted. System Engineering/System Integration - There will be a few managerial issues to discuss. The project book update needs to be done soon; Baars is heading this effort. System integration needs a lot of work. We are waiting for Gray to start in early December. We are short on manpower at ESO. Work needs to be done to update the system block diagrams. Science - Guilloteau issued the memos on the compact array. Holdaway is also working on a memo summarizing the effects of antenna surface error on imaging performance. The configuration working group meets every two weeks and a new configuration design will be available next week to discuss. The ALMA book will be published shortly. Wootten has given talks to several groups (Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, OVRO). The next ALMA DH/TL meeting will be December 17 at 1500 UT. From awootten at NRAO.EDU Fri Dec 21 16:47:43 2001 From: awootten at NRAO.EDU (Al Wootten) Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 16:47:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] Configuration CDR Message-ID: <200112212147.QAA05190@polaris.cv.nrao.edu> To Configuration Group and Interested Parties Details of the Configuration CDR Date: January 24-25, 2002 Location: Array Operations Center, NRAO, Socorro, N. M. Access: Fly into Albuquerque. It is about 70 miles, one hour, to Socorro. See http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/vla/html/aocdir.shtml To reach the AOC, you must either rent a car, or take a shuttle, which is ~$50 each direction, to get from the airport to Socorro. Lodging: The CDR occurs just after the EVLA LO/IF PDR to be held 22-23 Jan, and before the NSF review of AUI, to be held the following week. We will lodge visitors in the Visiting Scientist Quarters and local hotels. Please let me know your plans for arrival and departure dates as soon as possible. Please contact 'nmreserv at aoc.nrao.edu' or go to http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/cgi-bin/visitor.cgi to make your lodging reservations. Note that if you plan a Saturday night stayover, the ski areas at Santa Fe (quite a charming town) are about an hour north of the airport in Albuquerque. If enough are interested in visiting the VLA, about an hour west of Socorro, that may be arranged also. You will not see much of the ALMA prototype antenna at this early date. 2) AttendantInvitee List (PLEASE COMPLETE) Bryan Butler , Leonia Kogan , Steve Myers , Crystal Brogan , Douglas Bock , Craig Walker , Tim Cornwell , Rick Perley , Michael Rupen , Frazer Owen , John Conway , Frederic Gueth , "Stephane Guilloteau" , "Steven Heddle" , Mark Holdaway , Angel Otarola , Jeff Kingsley, Antenna Division Head , Jerome Pety Jerome Pety , Jeff Mangum, , Koh-Ichiro Morita "Morita, Koh-Ichiro" , Simon Radford, Site Division Head , Dick Sramek, BE DH , Gie Han Tan, System engineering Gie Han Tan , Francois Viallefond , Frederic Boone , Adrian Webster Adrian Webster , Al Wootten , David Woody "David Woody" , "Seiichi Sakamoto" , Daniel Hofstadt Dick Kurz , "Jacob Baars" , "Robert Brown" , "Marc Rafal" , "Peter Gray" , Jorg Eschwey Invited members / reviewers As for the PDR, to be confirmed. IPT Leads: Sramek, Tan, Kingsley, Radford, Guilloteau, Wootten others 3) Documents To be ready 2 weeks in advance for distribution, or 9 January - Compact configuration (Kogan) - Spiral concept (Conway) - uv-metric concept (Boone) - Hybrid concept (Webster) - Imaging tests (Guilloteau, Heddle, others?) 4) Goal of the meeting: select a baseline design to continue with detailed implementation work ... CDR Review Guidelines Version 2 - 98November09 P. J. Napier The purpose of the CDR of an MMA Subsystem is principally to review 3 questions: (1) Are the detailed requirements for the subsystem complete and adequate? (2) Will the design selected for implementation on the test array meet the requirements? (3) Are interfaces to other subsystems defined adequately and completely? (4) Has adequate attention been given to the produceability and maintainability of the subsystem? Meeting organization and attendance to be the same as a PDR. MMA199901-0010 Actually, there are four, and we aren't MMA anymore but the rules have not changed...I think that we should leave this meeting with one design and one philosophy to guide any changes. Agenda of PDR: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/almaconfigpdragenda.html Report of PDR: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/administration/designreviews/configurationpdr.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Could you please (1) confirm your participation as soon as possible, and (2) give me the following information before January 4 : Date of arrival : Date of Departure : Need for a single or double-room ? Also, don't forget to give this information to contact 'nmreserv at aoc.nrao.edu' or go to http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/cgi-bin/visitor.cgi to make your lodging reservations. _______________________________________________ mmaimcal mailing list mmaimcal at listmgr.cv.nrao.edu http://listmgr.cv.nrao.edu/mailman/listinfo/mmaimcal