[Escoordminutes] ES Division Coordination meeting minutes - Aug 4

[Lew Serna]

Minutes for the ES Division Coordination Meeting held on Tuesday, August 
4, 2009, at 10:30 am, in the LL CB conference room. Attending were Lew 
Serna, Charley Chavez, Ramon Gutierrez, Gene Cole, Brent Avery, Jim 
Ruff, Guy Stanzione, Martin Lopez and J Sullivan.


BUDGET —Monitor your spending closely several accounts are overrun order 
only essential items. No firm word on when or what the stimulus money 
will be spent on. It is likely that some ES Division items on submitted 
lists will be funded such as AZ bearings, track, VSQ repairs, VLBA track 
work and perhaps bus acquisitions. We are also still waiting for gearbox 
funding for training, oil and gears.

PARTS RESTOCKING SERVICES.- The Auto and Track groups are trying out the 
automatic restocking by Fastenal. Reports are that the program is 
working very well for them. Other groups such as Antenna Mechanics and 
HVAC may be interested. There is no further interest at this time.


Surplus Tires—the pile of bad tires is growing. Business division is 
looking for a place to take them to because the Socorro dump does not 
want to accept them. The cost for disposal of bad tires rests with the 
Auto Shop. No action until further notice.

VLBA – The Mauna Kea TT visit remains for this fiscal year. A Mechanical 
Visit to Los Alamos was made on 7/14-7/16.


The Brewster and North Liberty foundations continue to degrade and will 
require urgent repairs in the near future at an approximate cost of $15K 
each. Foundation work is expected in FY2010. Work is preferred in the 
fall not in the winter since it requires much time to cure.

HN, MK and KP require one each wheel assembly to be replaced.


We will continue in FY2010 with Maintenance visits to HN, FD and BR.

Repair of the subreflector brought back from St. Croix is in progress. 
Tony has been transferred to track crew so another person has to be 
trained to repair. MK dish panels that were damaged were replaced. The 
damaged panels will need to be repaired for spares.

It is possible that passports will be required in future visits to St. 
Croix.

Some work installing Ka band feeds may be required in the near future.

Guy has ordered new materials (more affordable for making spare dichroic 
panels. Two will be fabricated and sent to Sri in CV for testing.

AZ BEARINGS – The purchase of 5 new bearings has been submitted for 
funding with stimulus money. . If the budget allows it is desirable to 
have Antenna 5’s bearing looks to be refurbishable at half the price of 
a new one. There is a 2 year minimum lead time for new and refurbished 
bearings from Rotek. We have two spare bearings, one bearing usable as 
an emergency spare only and has been labeled “emergency spare only”. 
Older grease samples show that antennas 25, 10 and 20, are candidates 
for scheduled bearing changes. New grease samples of all VLA antennas 
have been taken. Antenna 25 is an EVLA antenna and it has the worst 
sample. Antenna 25 will be in line for replacement in 2010 unless a bad 
gearbox is found on a VLA type Antenna with an old bearing, in which 
case that bearing will be changed. 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 for repair. 
13 bearings have been replaced to date.


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 and the steps replaced. The eastern stairway 
barricaded to prevent its use. There is no urgency for this project 
since safety has declared that there is no need for this stairway as a 
means of emergency egress. Work on the eastern stairway will continue as 
the workload permits. No further progress.

ST Croix PAINT MAINTENANCE VISIT—It is Apparent that a follow up 
painting program should be initiated preferably in the fall. It is 
desirable to send a crew to St. Croix to continue painting areas where 
bleed through is evident. If this is not possible due to budgetary 
constraints, then perhaps the site techs could do the painting for 3 
weeks straight with hired help sometime in the fall. Jon will recommend 
that Site Techs do spot repairs until enough funds are available for a 
follow up painting program. Another option at a reasonable price has 
been offered by the contractor that helped with the original major 
antenna painting. HydroPrep, LLC has offered to complete spot repairs 
for a very reasonable price. Funding is being sought for this.

VLA ANTENNA FOUNDATION MOVEMENT— A problem with north arm antenna 
foundation movement needs to be addressed. It appears that the two 
rearward station pillars have been slowly separating over the years at 
CN6, BN3, CN7 and BN5 with BN5 being the worst. They have separated far 
enough in about 33 years that 1 bolt (one on a reward pad) can no longer 
be used to secure the antenna pad to the foundation pillar. Modification 
of the CN6 plates and BN5 are complete and the plates are reinstalled. 
This will solve the immediate problem of setting down antennas on these 
foundations.

Markers have been set for taking measurements to try and see which 
pillars are actually moving and at what rate. No change has been 
observed between loaded and unloaded measurements thus far however 
better; finer measurements need to be taken throughout the year.

If the pillars are moving apart it is felt that there may be no 
practical way of preventing the movement. It is believed that if this is 
the case it would be more desirable/practical to build an additional 
foundation next to the bad ones. Another option is that if the pillar 
movement is very slow it may be adequate to modify/redesign the mounting 
plates in order to make up and correct for the movement. In any case it 
would be desirable to get inspection of the foundations and a 
recommendation for action. A cost estimate for an inspection has been 
requested to an outside firm.


GENERATOR REPAIRS— Minor leaks were noticed at the engine rear seals and 
it is desirable to install a better fuel filtering system. A bearing on 
the generator unit also should be replacement as a PM. This work would 
cost around $15K and has been put on the funding wish list.

HOT WATER LOOP. A project is submitted to install a hot water loop using 
Correlator waste heat: The difference between the summer load and winter 
load is mostly due to heating (at least 300kW). However, even during the 
coldest mornings the cooling tower is ventilating correlator waste heat 
into the atmosphere. We already use some of the heat in the Control 
Building, but by extending the hot water loop to other buildings, we may 
be able to reduce our power demand. The WIDAR correlator will have an 
even higher heat output to work with.

This project mainly consists of burying a hot water loop and using heat 
exchangers similar to what many complexes of buildings use. Payback on 
this project could be as quick as 1 year. Bob Broilo will investigate 
and provide further information. No progress..

VLA AZ GEARBOX’s (Antenna 5 etc..)--Antenna 5’s #2 gearbox experienced a 
catastrophic failure failed on Wednesday, April 15, 2009. Antenna 5 #1 
gearbox was ok. The bad gearbox was replaced with the spare gearbox. The 
bad gearbox is repaired. Three gears will be fabricated in a shop out of 
Carlsbad, NM for around $800ea. A reverse engineering of two other gears 
has been requisitioned.

VLA Az Gearboxes are due for oil changes. A plan to change around 10 
antennas per year is being formulated beginning with remaining 6 VLA 
antennas and then continuing with all EVLA antennas @ approx. 10/ year. 
Training and equipment will be required. Meanwhile gearboxes should be 
checked during their EVLA conversions in the AAB.


BALLAST DOORS-- New project is proposed to convert manual opening of 
ballast car doors to hydraulic controlled opening of the doors for 
dispensing ballast from the cars. Much dust is created and the operator 
is too close to the doors to be able to observe the dispensing properly 
and safely. This Project will cost around $8K. Awaiting funds.

EVLA;
Civil— Correlator Room: The Air Conditioning system needs to be tied in 
to the CPCC for controlling of air handlers when desirable and during 
emergency shutdowns. For controlling traffic to the correlator, a 
special one way has been installed at the end of the elevator hallway. A 
meeting with computing (James Robnett) isnecessary for the installation 
of 6 twist lock outlets to power additional racks in the correlator room.


Safety has scheduled fire alarm testing with Operations on August 25, 
2009. Bob will coordinate that effort with the annual power supply PM’s.


EVLA Antennas—The Antenna Group must complete mechanical overhauls to 23 
antennas to meet the retrofit schedule for EVLA design in FY2009. This 
goal is currently on schedule

A total of 20 S-band (2-4 GHz) feed horns will be fabricated in FY2009. 
S-band feeds are assembled so far. All rings have been cut for the 
S-band. The Ku-band (12-18 GHz) feed horns will also be fabricated in 
FY2009. This is on schedule.

A prototype insulating of the feed cone/vertex room is done in EVLA 
antenna 25 in an effort to improve temperature stability in the feed 
cone/vertex room. Bob has used a thermal imager to see where we are 
losing most of the heat in the feed cone. An analysis and recommendation 
will be made as soon as time permits.

Antennas will remain in the D array for 7 months.

As antenna #7 goes on line it is desirable to replace some of the early 
EVLA antennas with newer version EVLA antennas. Older versions will 
begin to be decommissioned (since the VLA Correlator cannot operate more 
than 22 antennas) for upgrades in the field. Antenna #17 will be 
decommissioned on Monday, Aug. 10. There will also be a period of 2 
months (Jan. & Feb.) that there will be no observing due to the 
Correlator being shutdown . This is an opportunity to bring older 
antennas up to date.

SAFETY REPORT: (James Sullivan) *ES Div. Accident’s year to date: 
*_There have been no accidents or incidents reported to me since April._

*Building Evacuation Drills: *There was an evacuation drill conducted on 
8 July 2009, of the VLA site Tech Services building. The drill went 
well, but there was some problems found with the intercom system in 
other buildings. **

*Training: *There is a welding safety training being offered on site on 
the 5^th . All employees that conduct welding actives should attend this 
training.

*Site Safety Meeting: *The last site safety meeting was held on July 23, 
2009. There were 31 employees in attendees. The topic was Driving Safety 
and VS-02, Vehicle use at NRAO sites.

*Next Site Safety Meeting:* The next site safety meeting will be on 
August 27@ 3:00pm in the VLA Cafe.

*Inspection(s)/Audit(s): * Site building inspections are ongoing. There 
have been a total of 7 inspections conducted this year. Maintenance 
Building, Generator Building, Carpenter Shop, Water and Fire Pump 
Building and Lift Station, AAB & Transporter Building, Annex Building, 
Cafeteria Building

A FM-200 testing/inspection is scheduled for August 25, 2009

*Fuel Tanks: *Inspections are ongoing. The culverts that run under the 
tracks need to be cleaned out the rest of the way. Lines need to be 
painted. I would like to thank everyone that has worked on this project.

Bob Daniels has drafted a to be sent to NMED explaining that our fuel 
tanks are certified above ground tanks. Skip will mail the letter to NMED.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:
ETK Training (Electronic Timekeeping) Electronic Timekeeping—— August 20 
is scheduled date to go to ETK only!

*2008 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION PROCESS *
ES Division signed appraisal forms were forwarded to the appropriate 
Human Resources Office and A copy of the signed appraisal should have 
been provided to the employee.