From lserna at nrao.edu Thu Nov 29 13:38:35 2007 From: lserna at nrao.edu (Lew Serna) Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:38:35 -0700 Subject: [Escoordminutes] ES Coordination Mtg. Minutes-Nov. Message-ID: <474F072B.80100@aoc.nrao.edu> Minutes for the ES Division Coordination Meeting held on Tuesday, November 27, 2007, at 10:30 am, in the LL CB conference room. Attending were Lew Serna, Ramon Gutierrez, Bob Broilo, Peggy Perley, Guy Stanzione, Jim Ruff, Gene Cole and Ken Lakies. BUDGET ?Resume spending under the assumption that you have 80% of last years operating budget. Money for the overhaul of the West Generator has been allocated and its overhaul began on 11/26. Track materials cannot be ordered until final allocations have been made. Final budget allocations could arrive as early as January. EVLA purchases should proceed as required. Funds for projects such as VLBA SC and FD elevation bearing replacements (approx. $30K ea.) and VLBA BR foundation repair (approx $15K) are being sought. VLBA TT Trips? Tiger Team visits to OV, LA, NL and St Croix will be planned for 2008. Dates TBD. We will try to replace one AZ wheel assembly at each site that requires one from now on. Antenna mechanics should ensure we have one wheel assembly ready for each site being visited. The paint on the HN subreflector was deteriorating badly but its surface contour seems to be in reasonably good shape. It might be possible to simply repaint the surface to ready it for installation the next scheduled SC maintenance visit. St. Croix will likely require an extended Visit. TT Visits should be planned to avoid conflict with VLA reconfiguration and EVLA overhaul schedules. The BR foundation will require repairs in the near future due to deterioration at an approximate cost of $15K. Elevation bearings grease samples taken at FD and SC are showing metal flakes. A plan to replace these bearings should be made soon. Estimated repair costs are around $30K-$35/ant. If this trend continues it may be necessary to replace the elevation bearings with a more robust bearing. MK dish panels that were damaged were replaced. The damaged panels need to be repaired for spares. A VLBA planning meeting is scheduled for December 12, 9:00 AM @ CB LL Conference Room. AZ BEARINGS ?Next Bearing replacement will occur in summer of 2008. An estimated three weeks in the AAB are required before a bearing change can occur. Parts from the bearings removed from antennas are needed for measuring and fitting of new parts and should be stored until they are scheduled to be shipped to Rotek for repair. Antenna 14, 16 & 18?s bearings have been shipped to Rotek for refurbishment. There is a 12-18 week lead time for delivery on a refurbished bearing. Delivery of these bearings would be around May-July of 2008. Grease samples show that antennas 28, 10, 20, are good candidates for the next bearing changes. Large metal pieces were recently found on Antenna 28?s AZ bearing grease. This bearing will be replaced in FY2008. There is one good Azimuth bearing on hand. One spare bearing should be maintained at all times in the event a catastrophic failure occurs however, it may be acceptable to use this bearing in early summer if we are assured of getting the other three bearings in late summer. If possible bearing replacement will occur at a rate of one per year in order to maintain the EVLA outfitting schedule. We should try to avoid scheduling conflicts between bearing changes, Tiger Team trips and reconfigurations. PROJECTS: Control building Stairways? The Control Building Stairways are being replaced due to their rapid deterioration. The stairways will be replaced with an improved design conforming to ADA. The western stairway is complete. A new concrete landing will have to be poured at the base of the eastern stairway. The eastern stairway is deemed hazardous and is currently barricaded to prevent its use but a more substantial barricade is still needed. Work on the eastern stairway will continue as the workload permits. No further progress. ST Croix Painting? St. Croix Antenna is undergoing extensive repair and painting work due to its severe corrosion problems. Work began on September 10 and is scheduled to be complete by December 17. Contractors finished water blasting the structure. Painting continues. Ray McFarlin will travel to St. Croix on the first week of December to begin preparing the antenna for operation. VLA ANTENNA FOUNDATION MOVEMENT? A problem with north arm antenna foundation movement needs to be addressed. It appears that the two rearward pillars have been slowly separating over the years at several stations with BN5 being the worst. They have separated far enough in about 33 years that 2 bolts can no longer be used to secure the antenna pads to the foundation pillars. It is possible that these pillars were installed this way since they have been problematic since day one. Markers have been set and measurements taken to try and see which pillars are actually moving if any. More readings will be taken this week. It is obvious that the plates need to be repositioned so this work should be done as soon as practical. VLA LIGHTING- All high mercury content light bulbs should be eliminated from stock. A plan to replace all ballasts and bulbs to efficient electronic ballasts is initiated. In addition to removing the high mercury content bulbs the savings in kilowatt usage would payback the initial cost in less than 2 years. Skip is funding this energy project. The Control Building is currently being changed over. Other buildings will follow. Ballasts for the Control Building have arrived for installation. GENERATOR REPAIRS? Recent operation of generators revealed that the current site load could not be carried by a single generator. The generator operating hours indicate that a top end overhaul was necessary. Money has been allocated to proceed with top end overhauls for both generators. It is increasingly important to have reliable generators for EVLA operations since both generators will need to come on line to carry EVLA site loads. East Generator overhaul is complete. The West Generator overhaul has begun and should be complete by mid December. A test to see if two generators can support array slewing should be made once both generators are overhauled and winter loads are evident sometime in January. A plan for conducting the test and monitoring voltages in the correlator and other areas of concern should be made. VISITOR CENTER-- The visitor center theater will undergo a remodel. Lighting, Doors, and a Projector are being ordered. Basically the step seating will be replaced with theater type seating and the movie equipment will be upgraded. New carpet and tile will also be installed. This project is funded by the EPO and Business divisions. Most of the material has arrived and project should begin around mid January. POWER MONITOR? A plan to install power monitoring equipment in the Hatch gear will require a power outage. Scheduling for an opportune time of installation is being investigated. The preferred time for installation would be the fall when the weather dry and calm. The instrumentation has been ordered. EVLA; Civil--A preventive measure to test batteries and lubricate the Correlator Door will be implemented by the ES Electrical group. The final cleaning from ceiling to floor has been accomplished. The cleaning underneath the computer flooring will follow installation of cabling. The design for cable support in the Correlator Room will be provided by ES Division. Station Rack loading has changed and will need to be accommodated by changing breakers or adding breakers and running parallel lines to the racks. More information will be gathered after the upcoming face-to-face meeting in December. The DRAFT Correlator commissioning plan will be sent to ES Division for input. EVLA Antennas? Feeds: Contracts for casting S-band and laminating of the S-band are underway. S-Band rings are being cut in preparation for assembly. For efficiency S-band feeds will be laminated two at a time every 8 weeks. The second S-Band Christmas tree will built using L-Band Christmas tree parts once the L-Band lamination work is complete. The hoist at the vertex is getting new cables and D-rings are available to attach harnesses for those doing hoisting operations. Training sessions for hoisting operations will be conducted for different groups separately and will be announced as they occur. Reminder to remove Lockout/tagout when it is not necessary to leave the antenna locked out. Please leave antenna in operational state whenever possible. Antenna 1 inspection will occur on Tuesday 12/4/07. SAFETY REPORT : 18 Accidents to date; up 3 accidents from last year. Required confined space training was held in early November. Follow up confined space entry will be held for those groups who actually work in confined spaces. New EMS Radio is in. ANNOUNCEMENTS: Happy Holidays OTHER: RADIOS? All VLA radios must go to narrow band. Glen Mauger will initiate reprogramming of all site radios for narrow band operation and will add an additional channel. Glen will contact individuals with radios. We solicit your cooperation.