[mmaimcal] 1 Aug 2005 BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO

Tue Aug 9 19:01:24 EDT 2005

Folks

Still trying to catch up pant pant.  Comments?

Al
                     BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO
                            August 1, 2005 -- August 14, 2005

******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT*****************************
On Monday evening, August 1st, the
first two contracts - of the corresponding first two phases - of the Array
Operations Site Technical Building were signed with Con-Pax, a Chilean
construction company. These contracts are to construct the building's
foundations and shell.

Mobilization by Con-Pax has already started and ground breaking will be
around the first week of September.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
ALMA EDM: New EDM person has started in Santiago - Carolina Lizama.
Carolina will be managing EDM in the future.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The September face-to-face meeting of the JAO with the IPT leads has
been cancelled owing to accelerated schedule for the ALMA Cost Review.
ALMA-J confirms they will shift the date for their ACA 
system review to Nov 10-11, in Japan.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html
See also the ALMA Calendar overview at:
https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar
or http://www.alma.cl/alma_project
*******************************************************************************
General Happenings
Santiago:  Activities include rebaselining, updating phonebook, 
Quarterly Report generation.

OSF:  Provisional Acceptance of the extension of the ALMA camp to 30 
bed capacity will now be in August 2005. The camp is meanwhile fully 
occupied by road maintenance and construction crews. Construction 
work for the establishment of the modified formation level of the 
permanent access road from km 28 to the AOS has started on 07-Jul-2005. 
Rough Work is in progress at km 33.
Currently there are approximately 60 persons working at the site

AOS:  Construction on AOS Technical Building to start 2005-Sept-20.
The Science team has removed old pad location stakes and scouted
the locations for the new configuration, providing instant feedback to
Conway on unsuitable locations with recommendations for new ones.
Old NRAO container battery complement removed, new batteries installed.
Radiosonde campaign underway; 9 Aug launched 8 times from 2 sites: 4 from 
5000m (Chajnantor) and 4 from 4500m.

Tucson:  Emerson is writing report from System Requirements Review.

AOC:  Socorro meeting on pipeline matters held.  Socorro meeting for data 
capture, science data model, and other matters also held.  Two digitizer 
pairs received from UofB are being evaluated.  The FE Simulator has been 
moved to Socorro from Tucson and returned to working order.

NTC: It has been recommended to the project that the original plan of two 
independent integration centers be implemented.
Band 3 (3mm):  The first 2SB mixer assembly for Cartridge #2 shows <37K noise;
 New gain compression measurements of B3 Cartridge #1 were made, showing 
<0.8% across the band.
All B6 (1mm) SIS mixer wafers have been delivered by UVA, and evaluation 
of the last 3 is in progress. Assembly of B6 Cartridge #3 began.
 Development of Line Length Corrector is proceeding in Charlottesville.
 Installation of the final cables in the correlator first quadrant 
was completed.

NAASC:  A review of the amplitude calibration device will be held on 
25th August at IRAM in Grenoble. The review is a joint activity of the 
Science IPT and FE IPT and will be chaired by Jeff Mangum.
 ASAC meeting was held 3 August; draft minutes posted at website.
 zMachine Workshop speakers 16/18 lined up, announcement to go out to 
1600-name ALMA list on 15 August.
 Antenna goretex window discussion was moderated by Wootten, who has 
gathered information onto a wiki page at 
https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/RfMembrane 
and has begun updating Scientific Requirements for the membrane.
*******************************************************************************
DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT ) see
https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/AlmaCalendar
 Mon  1 August
 Tue  2
10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon
 Wed  3
2:00 PM: ALMA NA Telecaucus
 Thu  4
11:00 AM: ALMA Board Telecon
 Fri 5:
11:00 AM: CCB Telecon
 Sat 6
 Sun 7
 Mon August 8
 Tue 9
10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon
11:30 AM-12:30 PM: Nutator Telecon
4:00 PM-5:00 PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference
             Agenda: https://wikio.nrao.edu/bin/view/ALMA/9Aug05A
 Wed 10
11:00 AM-12:00 PM: ALMA Science Software Requirements Telecon
 Thu 11
11:00 AM-12:00 PM: ALMA Calibration Telecon
 Fri 12
 Sat 13
 Sun 14
****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ******************************
New!  ALMA-JAO Calendar  http://www.alma.cl/alma_project

    * Aug 25 -- Amplitude Calibration Review, Grenoble
    * Aug 26 -- ANASAC Telecon
    * Aug 29 -- Antenna meeting, Kilgore, Tx
    * Sep 14 -- ESAC Meeting, Garching
    * Sep 15 -- European ALMA Board, Garching
    * Sep 22-23 -- ACA System Review, Santiago Postponed, probably to
                    Early Nov, Tokyo
    * Sep 24-30 -- JAO/IPT Meeting, OSF Postponed, probably to early Dec.
    * Sep 29-30 -- ESO Committee of Council
    * Oct 1-2 -- ASAC Meeting, Santiago
    * Oct 6 -- Rolling Stones come to Scott Stadium, Charlottesville
    * Oct 13-16 -- ALMA Cost Review proposed, Munich
    * Nov 1-2 -- ALMA Board, Santiago
    * Nov 8-9 -- ESO Finance Committee
    * Dec 7-8 -- ESO Council Regular Meeting
    * Jan 4-7 -- URSI/NA, Boulder
    * Jan 12-14 -- ALMA Zmachines workshop
******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS************************

******************************ALSO OF INTEREST*******************************
	SMA CALL FOR PROPOSALS
	Deadline: 13 September 2005

The Submillimeter Array (SMA), the radio interferometer on Mauna Kea built 
by the Smithsonian Astrophysical 
Observatory and the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy 
and Astrophysics, makes available a fraction of the 
observing time to principal investigators from the 
astronomical community (worldwide). The proposal deadline 
is 13 September 2005 for the observing semester 1 November
2005 through 30 April 2006. More information, technical 
details, and instructions and tools for proposal 
preparation and submission can be found at 
http://sma1.sma.hawaii.edu/, the SMA Observer Center web 
site. 

***	FCRAO 14 METER TELESCOPE PROPOSALS
	Deadline: 15 September 2005

The Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory solicits 
proposals for observations with the FCRAO 14 meter 
telescope. The deadline for proposal submission is 
15 September 2005. The telescope is equipped with a 32 
element focal plane array receiver (SEQUOIA) which is 
comprised of low noise MMIC amplifiers with SSB receiver 
noise temperatures of 60 K.  The autocorrelation 
spectrometer system enables the observation of two 
spectral lines within 85-100 GHz or 100-115 GHz bands 
simultaneously. On the Fly mapping is now the standard 
observing mode which allows more efficient imaging of 
the millimeter sky.

More detailed information of FCRAO and proposal 
instructions are available at 

http://www.astro.umass.edu/~fcrao/observer/.

Further questions can be addressed to Mark Heyer, 
mailto:heyer at astro.umass.edu. 
***************************************************************************
Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the
preceding biweekly period to Jennifer Neighbours or Al Wootten via e-mail
(jneighbo 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 available at
http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html