[daip] Problem with VLBA data tape

[Alan Marscher]

Sorry to use the shotgun approach, but I'm not sure to whom to
address this question.

We are having trouble loading the files (using FITLD in AIPS, version
31DEC99) from the data tape for observation BG099, 29 June 2000.  The files
have a lot of new tables, presumably for automatic calibration,
but some of these must be incompatible since 'DOCONCAT' doesn't
work.  So, we get a separate file for each UT section.  One anomaly
is that the UT table (which I've never seen before) has a different
version number for each section of data on the tape.  Furthermore,
the frequency numbers for the different sections correspond to
different frequencies.

Jose Luis reports that he encountered this error once before for
another data set.  So, either it occurs occasionally or occurred
over some finite period of time.  We don't have the problem for
a data tape written in late 2000 for an observation on 1 Oct 2000.
So, it's not a matter of having too old a version of AIPS.

Of course, it's possible to deal with this with a lot of patience
(running DBCON, etc., on each file) and a lot of disk space.  But
it seems like a waste.  I suspect that it was caused by an error
at NRAO when writing the data tape.  If so, then it would be best
from our viewpoint if NRAO would write and send us another data tape.
(Please send it to Alan Marscher at Boston University rather than
to Jose Luis Gomez in Spain.)

Please advise.

Thanks very much,
Al Marscher, Jose Luis Gomez, and Svetlana Jorstad