ALMA WEEKLY PROGRESS REPORT Week Ending 5th December 2003 Name: Jeff Mangum IPT: AEG ATF: (1) VertexRSI on-site for antenna maintenance this week. (2) Analysis of pointing and tracking data acquired to-date continues. (3) Preparations for holography measurements of AEC antenna. Planned installation of holography system 2003/12/09. Name: John Effland IPT: Front End In addition to my report, status reports are included below from Gene Lauria, and Alex Grichener. *** Major Issues: Completed noise and image rejection measurements of the prototype Band 6 Cartridge. Alex Grichener has decided to remain with us and continues developing software and is now also spending 1/4 of his time engaged in hardware work. The lack of drafting support has slowed cartridge documentation. *** Progress: *** Cartridge Construction Tony Kerr, Geoff Ediss, and I have reviewed the proposed specification for Band 6 and I am preparing to forward the revisions to Charles Cunningham. *** Mixer-Preamps Three new mixer bodies have been completed by the shop and will be assembled as soon as the mixer assembly group puts their lab back together. Assembly of production preamps has been delayed while Mike Lambeth helps reassemble the Mixer Test System. *** Cartridge Test Rack: A complete set of mixer noise temperature and sideband rejection data was obtained last week, and this system is now being dismantled for moving to the NTC. *** Mixer Test Rack: Gene Lauria and Mike Lambeth moved their system and had the Sumitomo compressor running again in 3 days. *** Software: Alex Grichener continued working on low level LabVIEW routines in collaboration with Christian Holmstedt. *** Management I am working with Antonio Perfetto to refine manpower loading required for the cartridge construction and measurement. *** Tasks to be completed last week: 1) Finish additional noise temperature and physical temperature testing with the Cartridge Test System Done 2) Retest a mixer-preamp in the Mixer Test Dewar after installing capacitors to eliminate preamp oscillations. Done 3) Update the labor estimates for all tasks. In progress *** Tasks to be completed this week: 1) Mixer Test System operational at NTC 2) Cartridge Test System compressor running at NTC Report from Eugene Lauria IPT: Front End Week Ending: 12-06-03 Brief Summary of Work this past week: (Discuss progress, problems, issues encountered): IF amplifiers: ACC is still working on the three prototype units. They are having some "growing pains" in putting the amplifiers together for the first time, but they are minor. We had to ship some extra resistors and capacitors to them because they had some difficulty in mounting them and we only sent what was needed to build the three amplifiers. However, they should finish them next week. Mixer/preamp test Dewar: We have successfully transported the Dewar over to the NTC building and installed the compressor. The refrigerator was fired up for the first time this past Thursday. This week we will continue to unpack the Dewar and get it running again. The goal is to have it running and ready to measure mixers again by the end of this week (12-13-03). My only major concern is getting the rack computer and software connected, but I don't foresee this being a major problem. Report from Alex Grichener I. Software development in LabVIEW: A. Rewrote the noise measurement VI to run in a cleaner and more efficient way B. Took advantage of the Cartridge system still being intact to test and validate several low-level VIs II. Touched base with Christian Holmstedt about coming up with a plan for working together on the remaining software III. Looked at the top-level diagrams for the LO plate. I did not have enough information to get very far with that. Name: Kamaljeet S Saini IPT: Front End/First Local Oscillator (1.) Two frequency triplers for the Band-7 LO chain were received this week. Evaluation of these units is planned starting next week after the Band-7 active multiplier chain, required for this test, is completed. The rest of the components for the Band-7 LO driver chain have already been completed and are available for use. The frequency multipliers are to be shipped to ESO/IRAM before the the 31st of December. (2.) C. Cunningham finalized the FEND-40.10.00.00-015-A-SOW and FEND-40.10.00.00-015-A-SPE documents and asked to proceed with the Band-6 and Band-7 purchase order for full ALMA first LO requirement. The PO and the support documentation was forwarded to J. Delgado for further action. Additional "sole-source" justification document was drafted at J. Delgado's request. (3.) The LSPA132 driver amplifier for the Band-9 LO chain is still being debugged. The alternate EBPA design for the same amplifier is tuned too high and cannot be used. Consequently a driver amplifier based on power combined low power LSPA1 design is expected to be used, at least initially. This can only provide about 20 mW of output power, which is marginal for pumping the Band-9 LO quintupler. A developmental contract for the demonstration of Band-9 quintuplers with improved efficiency at low drive power levels was awarded to Virginia Diodes Inc. (VDI). The final deliverable shall be (i) test data on six quintuplers that are proposed to be assembled and (ii) three best units of the lot. The development effort shall involve the following two courses of investigation: (i) re-optimization of the matching circuits and anode sizes and (ii) use of a reduced barrier-height Schottky diodes. This effort is not "guaranteed" to yield useful devices. The cost of having a contract that guaranteed devices at least as good as the existing frequency quintuplers was significantly more and was therefore not recommended. A formal development time-line and schedule is being worked on in conjunction with VDI at this time. Further procurement of Band-9 frequency quintuplers is being held off pending the outcome of this effort. (4.) Completed and forwarded the document on characterization/acceptance tests for the first LO driver assemblies for Bands-3, 6, 7 and 9 to C. Cunningham for use as an outline for formalizing the LO driver deliverable work package with the concerned groups. This exercise was also helpful for the upcoming LO driver tests as described in (5.) below. (5.) The development of the test procedures are on hold pending the availability of finished LO driver assemblies. (6.) Delivery of the machined boxes from Wave-Mechanics for the Phase Lock circuits was past due. Holdup was at the NRAO purchase side due to which they did not receive a PO for the job. Problem has been addressed. Delay should not be critical since the circuit boards are still being worked upon and not yet available to be mounted. Name: Clint Janes IPT: Back End The equipment racks for the prototype BE electronics modules have arrived. BOMS prepared for MTBF analysis by SE IPT. Schedule and instructions for CDR prepared and will be further distributed by next week. CDR Plan submitted to JAO for approval. Personnel requisition requested for fiber optics engineer to design AOS fiber layout and to coordinate fiber optics designs from Antenna to Correlator. Name: Scott Rankin IPT: Computing * ITS o Progress + Sifted many resumes for the vacant ITS position. + Worked on improving ITS use of TWiki ActionTracer to maximize productivity. o Issues + Finding a candidate to fill the vacant ITS position is consuming a lot of time. o Activities + Continue searching for candidates for the vacant ITS position. + Help define Subsystem Test Examples. * Correlator o Progress + Continued porting the subset of CORR code delivered for R1 to ACS 3.0. o Issues + The CORR code port to ACS 3.0 is due by the end of December, 2003. This date is at risk, due to time required for ITS and SE assignments. o Activities + Complete porting the subset of CORR code delivered for R1 to ACS 3.0. * SE o Progress + Sifted many resumes for the vacant ITS position. o Issues + Finding a candidate to fill the vacant SE position is consuming a lot of time. o Activities + Continue searching for candidates for the vacant SE position. + Publish Java GUI guidelines. * Other o Progress + Moved activity reports to ALMA Software TWiki. o Issues + None o Activities + None