[alma-config] pad and transporter requirements

[Mark Holdaway]

A few comments:

1) John Lugten came up with a clever idea for picking up the
antennas in the compact configuration.  If the transporters
grasp the antennas above the azimuth axis, you can drive the
antenna to the proper orientation to mate with the transporter.
Further, I think John wanted the antennas to be azimuth-drivable
"by hand" from the antenna (rather than just from the control room).
Just didn't want that idea to be lost.

2) If there is an ultracompact array, its whole purpose in life
is to provide ultra-short baselines, which may likely be
excluded by using the same pads as the large antennas sit on.

3) The "detailed reconfiguration plan" for the compact array should also
contain a simple model of which antennas need to be moved to get out an
antenna on any given pad if it was required to be moved for maintenance or
other reasons.  John Lugten's preliminary work based on a random compact
configuration I made (40 antennas!) was that you needed to move at most 2
(or possibly 3 - my memory is at fault here!) antennas to get to the worst
case antenna burried in the center.  For 64, thats probably 3 antennas.  
Keeping that number low is a (hopefully non-demanding) design constraint
on the compact configuration.


By the way, at the SKA meeting in Arecibo, someone said:
"You can throw a handful of rice on the overhead projector and
come up with an antenna configuration with excellent (u,v) coverage."

	-M