From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Wed Jan 2 10:18:42 2002 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 10:18:42 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] DH Meeting Minutes - December 03 Message-ID: ALMA US DH Teleconference Minuets - 2001-Dec-03 Attendees: Avery, Brown, Glendenning, Kingsley, Perfetto, Porter, Radford, Rafal, Simon, Sramek, Webber, Wootten News: The President has signed the appropriation bill, which includes $12.5 M for ALMA Construction. NSF is looking into ways to provide funds before the official NSB approval. Today in Garching, ESO approved entry of the United Kingdom into ESO. This was a necessary step for ESO participation in ALMA. AEC Meeting in Grenoble ------------------------------- Simon will send out the revised costing plan that fits into the $552 M guidelines. There were some substantive decisions made at the AEC: 1) The AEG proposed name change for the test interferometer site was approved; the new name will be the ALMA Test Facility. The turn system for Socorro was approved as was the equipment list. Japanese may continue to participate in the ATF; however, they will have to pay for their own foundation. Japan will build their own electronics; we will not build the evaluation receiver, etc. for the Japanese prototype antenna. We will make sure it is software compatible. They will have to make their hardware compatible with us and their antenna testing should be independent of ours. The Japanese should look after everything associated with their antenna. We should not plan on their antenna being part of the test interferometer. We will not build electronics for the third antenna. The Europeans are proceeding with the Alcatel antennas; delivery is expected April 2003. Alcatel will be including the metrology needed to meet specifications. Kingsley reports that Alcatel will use a tent at the ATF instead of the VLA antenna barn. The AEC has put together a list of top level milestones: Jan 01 2003 legal access to site 4th quarter 2005 1st antenna on site 4th quarter 2006 start of science commissioning (end to end testing of system) 2007 Interim science operations with non-ALMA scientists The current plan is to end evaluation of the two prototype antennas early in 2004, and expect to place a contract during the fourth quarter. The RFP for the antenna will go out before the testing is complete. Vendors will submit a proposal before they know if their antenna meets specifications. This should help the competitive situation. This makes it vital that antenna testing results are kept confidential. We will need to establish more control of file access. The dates and location of ALMA week has been shifted to the week of April 22nd in Grenada. This will confirmed; it will be Monday through Friday or Tuesday through Saturday. An update to the project book is going to be needed; the AEC will submit the updated project book to ACC. Baars will be organizing this and you should refer to his recent email. Contact White if you need this to be resent. The Fall AMAC meeting has been postponed and will not meet before April 2002. Status Reports -------------- Sramek - The digital receiver board has been sent to fabrication and should come back in mid December. Testing to be complete by mid January. The RFP for the holography tower should be sent out to bids by December 19, and plan to have a contract by the end of December. Glendenning - There are many items in progress. Vertex wants to slip the factory test from early January to late January or early February. Kingsley is working with Brooks to keep on schedule at Vertex; we are ready on our side. Marsen starts with ALMA today. Kingsley - The delta CDR material was distributed last week. The CDD information from Vertex was received and will be distributed today. Working on several contract changes (liquidation damages, etc.). Vertex is still holding April 23, 2002 as their delivery date. Perfetto - The receiver frames are being assembled. The holography receiver assembly is starting. Chang starts today and will be working on the holography receiver. Payne - We are working on the laser metrology for the antenna evaluation to verify front end model of antenna and BUS. Ready to order parts are to be made from simple machining to measure changes in distance for eight selected paths. Glendenning needs the front end ICDs. This is not the $50K metrology system. We need to buy both systems. The Japanese contacted Payne to plan when they could bring their 3mm device to Tucson for testing. This will be done in January. The OMT 1 mm drawings are complete; bids will go out in next couple of weeks. The 3 mm budge estimates are complete; these are confidential. Radford - Four options for the roads have been presented. Radford will be meeting with Hofstadt to discuss the options. We are planning to have a PDR in July for development. Radford is on his way to Chile to review the site in detail. Avery - Canada is proceeding to "ramp up" the work on Band 3. A new SIS engineer started today. Che Yung has been named the work package project manager for Band 3. The Canadian budget is to be announced one week from today; we are hoping for long range planning funds. So far approximately $14 M has been identified for Canadian activities. Avery questioned if there is a central point for information on planned contracts and procurements. Porter stated that he should probably be the central point of contact. Avery and Porter will look into this issue. Webber - Tests were started on fine tuning the synthesizer. The initial tests were positive. From cwhite at nrao.edu Wed Jan 2 13:28:04 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 13:28:04 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] Correction to DH Meeting Minutes Message-ID: <3C335134.7020504@nrao.edu> Keith Yeung is the Receiver Band 3 project manager in Canada, not Che Yung as noted in the December 3 DH Meeting Minutes. To reach Yeung: Keith Yeung Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics National Research Council of Canada 5071W Saanich Road Victoria, B.C. Canada V9E 2E7 250-363-0067 voice 250-363-0045 fax keith.yeung at nrc.ca Thanks, Carolyn From cwhite at nrao.edu Mon Jan 7 10:14:27 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2002 10:14:27 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] DH Meeting Today Message-ID: <3C39BB53.2010900@nrao.edu> There will be an ALMA Division Head Meeting Today at 1800 UT. Please dial 434-972-7268. Thanks Carolyn From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Mon Jan 14 09:19:10 2002 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 09:19:10 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] ALMA Bi-Lateral DH/TL Meeting Minutes - December Message-ID: ALMA Bi-lateral DH/TL Meeting - 2001-Dec-17 Attendees: Avery, Baars, Baudry, Brown, Simon, Glendenning, Gray, Guilloteau, Hasegawa, Ishiguro, Kurz, Mangum, Porter, Radford, Rafal, Raffi, Sekimoto, Stanghellini, Ukita, Webber, Wootten Status Reports - Administrative - Rafal reported that the President has signed the NSF appropriation bill, which includes the $12.5M for ALMA construction. NSF is going through formal processes to start construction. Before spending the funds, NSF needs to get approval from the NSB. Their next meeting is in March or April 2002. The Board has been very supportive of the project in the past and we anticipate no problems. Antenna - Kingsley reported that there was a delta CDR last week which resulted in all previous CDR issues being resolved. We are currently reviewing the CDD for completeness; we expect to close this item by the end of December. The panel fabrication is underway. We will lift the BUS onto the pedestal in April. We will initiate mechanical and electrical tests even if some panels are still to be delivered. The delivery date from Vertex is still April 2002; at this time the outer ring of the panels may be missing. Vertex will start at the ATF in January. Baars reported that ESO will sign a new contract this week; it will be 16 months after this for delivery of the antenna to the ATF. The current Alcatel design is based on the original EIE design, but has a new panel fabrication technique. The new panels will be electro-deposited nickel. The panels have good solar properties and they are about ~20 percent lighter than the original EIE panels. The metrology system will be included and will be defined in the next three months. Peter Gray, the head of System Engineering for ALMA at NRAO, was welcomed to the group. Site - Radford reported on the site campaign. Approximately ten people were at the site from ALMA, ASTE, APEX and other projects. Conway's group was surveying the site and antenna locations. They concluded that the "Chajnantor South" location is good for the central configuration. The group also looked at outer locations for the 3-4 km configuration. They will need to work with a road engineer to finalize plans. There will be a configuration meeting in January to finalize configuration. Radford also installed and updated the weather monitoring equipment and launched radiosondes. During this visit experiments with supplemental oxygen therapy was tested; people using the equipment felt better working on the site. ASTE and APEX groups were also there and did soil resistivity tests of interests to ALMA. In January there are plans to bore 16 soil test holes. Radford met with Hofstadt to further plan the site development. A site design review is planned for the period around mid 2002. There are differences between the three designs that exist for the 3 km array configuration. The group sees the benefit and need to work closely with a civil engineer to refine the site civil works and to optimize antenna locations. We need more detailed topographic maps to finalize our plans. Front End - Webber reported that the front end group has been discussing the optical system; they have plans to complete optics studies, including real calculations using physical optics for the cartridge configurations. Edge taper on band 6 is now at -9.6 dB rather than ~12 as in previous approximation in order to maximize the G/T. Mirror sizes may need to be adjusted. This has long term effects on window sizes, leak rates, etc. We now have a plan to carry out the needed detailed calculations, including G/T. It looks like band 6 (OMT's) just fit into current cartridges , band 7 (grids) also just fit. Avery reported on band 3. Yeung was appointed as the work package manager for band 3. The new Canadian budget was presented last Monday. NRC received significant new funding and we hope that high priorities in the long range plan will be funded. Prospects for ALMA are now very good, but the details remain to be understood. Back End - Baudry has little to report since our last meeting. Following the review, we have submitted a new design for the 2 bit digitizers, and the design is at the foundry now. We are working on the preliminary costing of the sampler production. There are no budget problems yet, but details are still very preliminary. The current plans include have a back end, LO PDR during ALMA week. Computing - Various documents are under review (see current web page). Main activities in the US include the upcoming Vertex factory servo tests, which should be in late January. The AIPS++ verification tests were due in late November, but our goal now is to complete end-to-end IRAM data reduction by the end of January. Guilloteau commented that AIPS++ data structures may need modification to fully support millimeter array data reduction. We are planning to have several software meetings during ALMA week. Brown confirmed that ALMA week will occur April 23-27 in Granada, Spain. There will be a preliminary session at the beginning of the week to update status for everyone. Baars reported that we need the project book updated before its submission to the ACC on 2001-Feb-01. DH/TL need to have their submissions in by January 7. Baars will do the cross checking and make the final editing changes. Science - There is a series of memos on simulation results. Wootten is at OVRO reviewing the WVR tests, but work is being slowed due to limited availability of OVRO staff and poor weather. At this time it doesn't look like the WVR data will be in production use at OVRO this winter. Guilloteau reported that there has been progress at the SMA site with the WVR; more information will be available soon. Small details measured by the FTS on-site are now well reproduced by atmospheric models up to 1.5 THz. Radford commented that there may be an FTS available to ALMA from SAO in next year or so. Canada plans to build two IRMA instruments and go to Chile in late spring 2002. They will compare their measurements with the 11 GHz interferometer. Radford and Avery will organize a telecon to arrange the details. Brown - The implementation of the IPT's is still on hold awaiting the ACC action. Rafal reported on the background info for the IPTs. ITPs are management and senior engineering personnel from the NA and European sides organized around major subsystems. Each IPT has a lead and a deputy. The IPT lead is the designated point of contact, but major decisions should be made by consensus within the IPT. When consensus cannot be reached, unresolved issues would be forwarded to project management. There is not a strong differential between the IPT lead and the IPT deputy; therefore the lead and deputy must work closely together. Changes affecting other IPTs should lead to formal change requests and/or involvement of project management. A written notice will come from the AEC. The list below is still subject to approval by the ACC and the yet to be named Project Director. A report from the ACC is due in February 2002 that will outline a plan for staffing of the Project Office. For now the AEC will carry out the functions of the Administration IPT. Interim IPT Structure - Site Hofstadt Radford Antenna Kingsley Stanghellini Front End Wild Cunningham Back End Sramek Baudry Correlator Webber Baudry Computing Glendenning Raffi System Engineering Tan Gray Science Guilloteau Wootten Next meeting will be Monday, January 28, 2002 at 1500 UT. The phone number will go out with the meeting reminder. And as a reminder to all, the 804 area code in the Charlottesville, VA, area will no longer work after January 15, 2002. You must use the 434 area code, as a "global replacement" for 804 for all numbers in Charlottesville. From cwhite at nrao.edu Mon Jan 14 10:57:32 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 10:57:32 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] ALMA DH Meeting Today Message-ID: <3C42FFEC.6060301@nrao.edu> There will be an ALMA US Division Head Meeting today at 1800 UTC. Please dial 434-972-7268. Agenda ------ Action Item List Status Reports Thanks Carolyn *** And as a reminder to all, the 804 area code in the Charlottesville, VA, area will no longer work after January 15, 2002. You must use the 434 area code, as a "global replacement" for 804 for all numbers in Charlottesville. From cwhite at NRAO.EDU Tue Jan 15 13:08:17 2002 From: cwhite at NRAO.EDU (Carolyn White) Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 13:08:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [alma_na] DH Meeting Minutes - December 7 and 14 Message-ID: ALMA US Division Heads Teleconference Minutes - 2002-Jan-07 Attendees: Brown, Glendenning, Gray, Kingsley, Mangum, Perfetto, Porter, Radford, Simon, Sramek, Webber, White Status Reports -------------- Mangum - The ATF face-to-face meeting will be in Grenoble, France, January 30 and February 1, 2002. The face-to-face meeting will re-enforce the monthly teleconferences. The TI plans have been discussed with most DH and they are aware of what they need to provide. Simon and Rafal will need to discuss budgetary issues. Mangum has summarized the antenna testing plans on his web site at URL: http://www.tuc.nrao.edu/~jmangum/alma/atf/almaprotoplan.pdf. Complete details are not there, but DH should be able to gather all necessary information for their subsystem. Kingsley - There will be a Configuration PDR meeting at the end January. Kingsley will visit with Vertex January 14-23. The ACU Servo Test will be at Vertex January 28-30. Gray and Wootten discussed the goals of the upcoming Configuration PDR. The goal of the PDR is to set forth a clear path to establish the antenna locations. Once this is done we will need to inlude an engineering perspective. Conway is expected to be point of contact for further Configuration planning. Radford - Would like the ALMA Project to appoint a road engineer. This is being worked on by Gray and Radford. Radford reported that the buildings will be located near the ridge north and west of the existing container. Perfetto - The evaluation receiver frame is ready in the lab; we expect to have inserts next week. There has been no progress on the holograhy receiver in the last couple of weeks. Still waiting for Europe to report on measuring the main feed. The Japanese will be visiting Tucson January 24 to test their photomixer. Sramek - The tower contract has been issued. The trailer and man lift are two purchase orders that have not yet been issued. Gray will be visiting the AOC in the next couple of weeks. We plan to meet to discuss issues on the fabrication of the ALMA sampler. The Back End PDR is planned for ALMA Week. Glendenning - We continue working on the network equipment. We recently held a review. Glendenning is interested in knowing when new ALMA positions may be filled. Webber - There were no scheduled reviews meetings this month. The custom correlator chip has been ordered; 80% of the board layout design is complete. Gray - Working on safety issues with Radford and Bolyard. Will be visiting Tucson and Socorro in the next couple of weeks. Simon - Continuing to work on refining the bi-lateral Project plan. Porter - Rafal plans to discuss with Porter ways to begin working with ESO on joint procurements. The second generation nutator parts are coming along. Changes to the sensors are being worked on. The Europeans signed the new prototype antenna contract with Alcatel; they expect delivery to be March 2003. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALMA US Division Heads Teleconference Minutes - 2002-Jan-14 Attendees: Avery, Brown, Cunningham, Glendenning, Gray, Kingsley, Mangum, Perfetto, Radford, Rafal, Simon, Sramek, Webber, White Rafal, Simon, and Gray have moved to the Ivy Road location in Charlottesville. Therefore all DH meetings will be in the Ivy Road offices; the Ivy Road teleconference hub is 434-984-0244. We will use this number for all future DH meetings. Funding Update -------------- We still do not have the $12.5 M from the NSF. We do not know when we will get the $1.5 M that was supposed to arrive in early January. At this moment we need to spend very carefully because we are, as expected, officially out of money. Large procurements should be put on hold and any critical purchases should be discussed with Rafal. Rafal is working with Vanden Bout on what we can do about this situation. There is no need to worry about salary payments though. The $12.5 M cannot be spent before the NSB approves the Project at their March or May meeting. There is no doubt that we will get their approval. Avery asked about the "official" Construction Phase start data for the U.S. At the moment we are not exactly sure. The fiscal boundaries set on the U.S. does not necessarily set fiscal boundaries for other partners. Rafal will report back to the group after he has further discussions with Vanden Bout and Desmond. Action Items ------------ Rafal has started to revamp the Action Item List to review the progress of the Project. The group went through the current on-line version and updates were made. White will put these on the web at URL: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/administration/actionlist/. The meetings list was also updated; remember to send White your meeting dates, etc. Questions arose on the Zero Baseline Interferometer and many questions were left unanswered. Rafal suggested a meeting be set up for the week of January 21 among a smaller group to finalize these plans. Sramek will send out a notice including date and time of meeting. Status Reports -------------- Antenna - Kingsley is at the Vertex plant in Germany. The panels are the critical path for the project. New results are going to be shown on Wednesday. Vertex is seeking to establish the capabilities of additional panel supplies to speed the work. The steel fabrication and mount are in process and recovering their recent slippage. The BUS items should ship this month. Kingsley stated that he believes the April 23 date will slip about two to three weeks. Vertex is still expected to be at the VLA site near the end of February. The offer that was made to Jose maybe slipping; he now has cold feet concerning the requirement he will have to move to Chile in two or three years. Jose will fill the VLA Antenna on-site position. Project Book updates are being completed. Back End - The digital data link receiver board has been received. We plan to populate and evaluate the board in Tucson in the next two weeks. The Project Book has had minor revisions, but we will not have a complete re-write until the Back End PDR during ALMA Week in April. Computing - The Project Book updates have been completed. Vertex is having some CAN compatibility issues; Brooks is working on this. ATF - The AEG prototype antenna testing software has arrived; Mangum is configuring this. Mangum is completing the organization of the AEG meeting that is at the end of January. Oterola arrived last week; his first assignment includes working on the weather stations. Evaluation Receivers - Both the evaluation receivers and the holography receiver are making progress. Homsted will start in Tucson on Tuesday. Front End - Cunningham is visiting ALMA sites to become familiar with the organization of the sub-system. Front End devices were ordered and are expected to arrive at the end of January. Site - Several soil borings were performed at the Chajnantor last week. Gray - Gray is in Tucson this week; plans to work with Oliver on the documentation activities for the Project. This will help to streamline the PDRs and CDRs and make them a more valuable tool for the Project. Our next meeting will be January 21 at 1800 UT. The new teleconference hub number will be 434-984-0244. Our next meeting will be January 14, 2002 at 1800 UT. From soliver at NRAO.EDU Fri Jan 18 10:14:43 2002 From: soliver at NRAO.EDU (Stacy Oliver) Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 08:14:43 -0700 Subject: [alma_na] [almanews] ALMA Memo 407 Released Message-ID: ALMA Memo # 407 Bandslope Effects On Sensitivity In Interferometers With Digital Correlators James W Lamb (Caltech) 2002/01/15 Keywords: Digitizers, samplers, correlators, interferometers, sensitivity In an interferometer with a digital correlator, sensitivity will be reduced by receiver and IF bandpass slopes. Numerical calculations have been carried out to estimate these losses for developing a flatness specification for the ALMA receivers and IF system. For the 3-level digitizer studied here a 2-dB slope across the band gives an efficiency reduction of about 4 % in the frequency channels where the gain is least. There is also an increase of efficiency of a similar magnitude in the high-gain channels. For continuum observations the channels are weighted according to the channel signal-to-noise and averaged, resulting in an efficiency reduction of ~1 %. From cwhite at nrao.edu Mon Jan 21 10:49:20 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 10:49:20 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] ALMA US Division Head Meeting Message-ID: <3C4C3880.2010401@nrao.edu> There will be an ALMA US Division Head Meeting today at 1800 UT. Please dial 434-984-0244. Remember this is our new teleconference number for the ALMA US DH Meetings. Thanks Carolyn From cwhite at nrao.edu Fri Jan 25 08:44:13 2002 From: cwhite at nrao.edu (Carolyn White) Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 08:44:13 -0500 Subject: [alma_na] ALMA Bi-Lateral Monthly Meeting Message-ID: <3C51612D.5030902@nrao.edu> The ALMA Bi-Lateral Monthly Meeting will be Monday, January 28, 2002 at 1500 UT. Please dial 434-984-0244. Thanks Carolyn