[mmaimcal] BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO 9/27-10/11

Sun Oct 3 21:25:52 EDT 2004

                        BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO
                             September 27 - October 11, 2004

******************************** THIS BIWEEK ***********************************
The Japan Negotiating Team, a committee of the ALMA Board, and 
representatives of the Japanese National Institutes of Natural Science 
(NINS) signed a draft agreement already signed by ESO and the National Science 
Foundation concerning the construction of the Enhanced ALMA on 14 September.
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The ALMA Science Advisory Committee meets in Charlottesville for their biannual 
face-to-face meeting on Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th Sept. at the NTC.  
Wednesday through Friday ALMA IPT leaders will meet in Charlottesville at the
Marriott Courtyard on W. Main St.
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The ALMA Management Advisory Committee will meet 11 - 12 October in Florence,
Italy with the ALMA Management IPT and the JAO.
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Dr. Adrian Russell will join the NRAO staff as the ALMA North America Project Manager
in early January 2005.  He plans to attend the JAO/IPT meeting in Charlottesville
29 Sept-1 Oct.  Currently, he is Director of the United Kingdom Astronomy 
Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Previously, he has been Deputy 
Director of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, the UK Project Manager for the 
Gemini twin 8-metre telescopes project (1995-2001) and Head of the JCMT 
Instrumentation Programme at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. 
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Larry D'Addario will depart NRAO on 2004 October 8 for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
As System Architect, Larry has guided the design of ALMA.  His contributions have
been fundamental, from design to integration of ALMA components.  
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Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at 
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html
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General Happenings

Chile:  SPdA:  The ALMA Board will meet in the shaded courtyard of the ALMA Camp
in early November.  The Camp is essentially complete (15 beds) for the current 
phase of its operation.  The Contractor's Camp, also complete at minimum level, 
currently houses the four road construction supervisors.  AOS foundation
contractor has been selected; bids for the building shell are due 1 Oct.

        Santiago:  The JAO convened a meeting in Santiago on September 14 to review 
site development status and issues.The temporary ALMA office in Santiago, Chile will 
host a meeting of the JAO and Executives on 1 November; members of the Board may visit
the facility before their departure to San Pedro that afternoon. 

TUC:  The group in Tucson, augmented by AOC folks, succeeded in constructing a short
baseline (16cm) interferometer using the RF simulator. This provides a very 
sensitive tool for studying phase stability and drift throughout the first LO 
system.  A CW signal at ~96 GHz is radiated from a free-running Gunn
oscillator into both horns of the RF Simulator.  Each receiving channel 
uses a separate First LO Driver at about 82 GHz, where both drivers are 
locked to the same optical reference from the new Laser Synthesizer (over 
separate 2m fibers), but with different offset frequencies.  The two IF 
outputs of the simulator at about 12 GHz are then multiplied in a microwave
double-balanced mixer.  So far offset frequency differences of 1 kHz to 1 MHz 
have been tried, producing a clean sinusoidal "fringe" at that frequency. 

NAASC:  Ewine van Dishoeck will speak on "Gas and Ice in Protoplanetary Disks"
Reprinting of the Spanish version of the ALMA brochure will proceed, mainly 
for distribution in Chile. NTSC versions of the ALMA DVD have been distributed.
Vector versions of the ALMA logo are available from ESO EPO and NRAO EPO.

NTC:  Testing of the first Band 6 (1.3mm) Production Cartridge will commence 
on the 24th of September.
Excluding the Tunable Filter Bank cards, 84% of the total boards needed for 
the first quadrant of the ALMA Correlator have been successfully bench tested 
and are ready for installation.

ATF: Tests continue on the Vertex Prototype antenna.  ALMA Prototype System
Integration expects first fringes 1 June 2005.

AOC:  Tests by the Correlator IPT at Socorro last week show that the Vega 1 
digitizers work well enough for testing the ALMA data transmission system.

DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT )
Mon 27 September
All day event: ASAC Meeting, NTC
9:30 AM-10:30 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting
10:30 AM-12:00 PM: JAO/IPT Teleconference
 Tue 28
All day event: ASAC Meeting
4:00 PM-5:00 PM: Colloquium: "Gas and Ice in Protoplanetary Disks" by E. van Dishoeck
 Wed  29
All day event: ALMA IPT Meeting
 Thu  30
All day event: ALMA IPT Meeting
5:30 PM-6:00 PM: CCB Meeting
 Fri  01 October
All day event: ALMA IPT
 Sat 02 
 Sun 03 
Mon  04
9:30 AM-10:30 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting
 Tue  05
 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested 
                                 parties) (434)296-7082
             Agenda to be posted at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ 
 Wed  06
10:30 AM-12:00 PM: ASAC Teleconference
 Thu  07
8:30 AM-10:00 AM: JAO Teleconference
 Fri  08  Sat  
09  Sun  
****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ******************************
ALMA Calendar  

    * 27-28 September -- ASAC face-to-face meeting, Charlottesville
    * 29 Sept - 1 October -- face-to-face IPT Leads Meeting, Charlottesville
    * 4-8 October -- The Cool Universe: Observing Cosmic Beginnings
                      Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria, Valparaiso, Chile
    * 11-12 Oct -- AMAC Meeting, Florence, Italy
    * 11-13 Oct -- New Windows on Star Formation in the Cosmos
                    University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland
    * 18-19 Oct --  PDR for the Tunable Filter Bank card; Bordeaux
    * 27-29 Oct -- Dusty and Molecular Universe Paris
    * 29 Oct -- ANASAC Telecon
    * 1 Nov -- ALMA JAO and Executives Face-to-face Meeting, Santiago
    * 2-3 Nov -- ALMA Board Face-to-face Meeting, OSF, near San Pedro de Atacama
    * 2 December -- ALMA Board Telecon
    * 5-7 Jan 2005 -- UNSC URSI Boulder meeting Commission J
    * 6 Jan 2005 -- ANASAC Telecon
    * 11 Jan 2005 - ALMA Town Meeting, AAS San Diego
    * 27 Jan 2005 -- ALMA Board Telecon

******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS *******************************

*******************************ALSO OF INTEREST*******************************

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Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the
preceding biweekly period to Janet Bauer or Al Wootten via e-mail 
(jbauer at nrao.edu or awootten at nrao.edu).

The calendar will be issued between late Friday and sometime on Monday by e-mail
to all NRAO scientific staff members and anyone else interested. A specific
mailing list, alma-info, has been created for anyone wishing to receive it.  Past issues
are now available at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html