[mmaimcal] MMA Imaging and Calibration Minutes, News, WBS stuff

[Al Wootten]

Minutes from meeting Tues, 6 October 1998 at 4pm ET.

LMA
---

I summarized this.  The British final report is available at:
http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~cjc/lma/ac-oct98.ps

MAC Meeting
-----------

The MAC meeting will be on the second Wednesday of each month at
noon ET.  We are invited to phone in at the CV conference number.
Date:   Wednesday, 14 October, 1998
Time:   12:00 pm EDT    (10:00 am Socorro, 9:00 am Tucson/CA)
Phone:  (804)296-7082   (CV SoundStation Premier Conference phone).
Principal topic this week will be the agenda for the 21 November meeting
at O'Hare.  I'll also give my report on the LMA meeting (third time!).

Active phase correction
-----------------------

Bryan reported on a talk and visit by Johannes Staguhn (U. Md.), who
is involved with the BIMA MDC project to build a 22 GHz water vapor radiometer
(WVR) with a multichannel backend for correcting phases at higher frequencies.
He is interested in 183 GHz and will consider how a detailed design might
be approached.  BIMA plans realtime delay adjustments based on the output
of the WVR.  The computing group has considered implications of such an
adjustment for realtime software on timescales of 1-30s.  At OVRO, a buffer
records both interferometer and WVR datasets, applying a software correction
as a safety factor, Min reports.  IRAM does it this way also.  Bryan 
reported a paper by Linfield which suggests corrections to <10s may not
be possible.
R.P. Linfield, Effect of aperture averaging upon tropospheric phase
 fluctuations seen with a radio antenna, Radio Science, v.33, 1353-1359, 1998
 
Ice
---

Bryan reported a visit by Kiyo Tamamura (Lockheed) at which the effects of
ice on radio signals was discussed.  As the ice particles can build up in
cirrus to 100s of micron size in clouds 1-2km thick, they can be effective
submillimeter scatterers.  At 230 GHz the effective opacity might be 6%
scaling as frequency.  Turbulence, or alignment of spindly grains may cause
problems on short time scales, or with polarized signals.

Site
----

Simon reported that radiosondes are on site and ready to float.  The
Smithsonian FTS broke after getting 2.5 mos of winter data; it is due for
repair in 1.5 weeks.  The dual site testing interferometer is running
and Simon and Bryan are considering how to deal with the datastream.
Butler has been working with Simon and Pardo on modeling radiosonde data
including ice and water drop scattering.  Bob Martin's 22 GHz radiometer will
be operating on site by the end of the year.  Simon believes that both 183
GHz radiometers are working now.

Next meeting
------------

Next Monday is a holiday, and Helfer, Butler, Wootten and Min will be
traveling (did I get that right?) Tuesday and beyond.  The next
meeting will then be the MAC meeting, for those who wish to attend.
We will meet after that to discuss how to confront the agenda for the
Nov. meeting.

MOC Meeting
-----------

The MMA NSF Oversight Committee Meeting will be in Socorro,
15Dec-16Dec. I will be attending the meeting along with other Division Heads
There is also a face-to-face DH meeting on the afternoon of
Monday, 14Dec.

Project Book
------------

The Project Book update is this weekend.  If you think things in any
particular chapter needs changing, let me know the suggested changes and
I will forward them on to Darrel.

WBS
---

FYI the WBS has reached levels of fullness described in the following
documents.  The Milestones have particular relevance for our group.
As each Milestone draws within four months, they will be on our agenda
for our meetings with increasing regularity.

The Milestones are a realistic estimate of when we can achieve a well
defined task.  It does not mean that a date cannot change.  However if
a task is falling behind schedule, management will decide the best
course of action to take: ie whether to let it slip or allocate
additional resources to try and keep the task on schedule. Richard is
just starting to put together the detailed schedule for the WBS which
will show the interaction between various tasks.

The final version of the Milestone/Deliverables will be sent to NSF,
posted on the web, etc., 19Oct. 

WBS Dictionary
All level three, some level four tasks, plus all milestones, all tasks with
dictionary entries.  Substantial additions since last version.
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~rsimon/wbsdict.pdf      (220 K, 45 pages)
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~rsimon/wbsdict.ps       (630 K, postscript)

Project Milestones
Summarizes milestones in a clean, sorted format
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~rsimon/milestones.pdf   ( 28 K, 4 pages)
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~rsimon/milestones.ps    (125 K, postscript)

Full WBS Task List
If you need the context for something
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~rsimon/wbsfull.pdf      (220 K, 44 pages)
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~rsimon/wbsfull.ps       (780 K, postscript)

Travel
------

T. Helfer:              07Oct-17Oct (Green Bank/UMD)
                        26Nov-09Dec (Tenerife)
A. Wootten:             13Oct-15Oct (U. Md.)

Clear skies,
Al