[evlatests] Slow focus motion on ea14
Rick Perley
rperley at nrao.edu
Thu Feb 9 17:27:39 EST 2017
A test last weekend had all the antennas changing band every 30
seconds.
In general, results were very good. But ea14 has a special
problem. It was clear that the visibility amplitudes and phases took
much longer to stabilize upon change of band than any other antenna.
Careful review of these showed that the amplitudes stabilized well
before the phases. This rules out subreflector rotation as the cause,
and points the finger at *subreflector focus*.
Only a few band combinations were affected. My test runs the bands
in order as the appear on the secondary focus: L to X to C to S to Ku
to K to Q to Ka.
The effect was seen only in the C to S and S to Ku transitions.
The former took 25 seconds for the subreflector to stabilize, the
latter took 40 seconds! The S-band focus position is significantly
different than the higher frequency ones, probably accounting for the
extra time. So either the focus motion on ea14 is especially slow, or
the S-band focus on ea14 especially far from the normal (or the value in
the tables is especially wrong ...)
If a focus motion is to blame, we would expect the L to X
transition to also suffer the problem -- but this is hidden as I do
referenced pointing first (taking nearly 3 minutes).
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