BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO February 28 -- March 14, 2005 ******************************** THIS FORTNIGHT********************************* Norio Kaifu, Director of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and Masato Ishiguro, ALMA-J Project Director visit Charlottesville 28 Feb, giving talks on NAOJ and Japanese plans for ALMA. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Adrian Russell, Project Manager for North America, arrived in Charlottesville. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Crocker of Lockheed Martin has replaced Dominick Tenerelli as a North American AMAC member. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Meadows was presented a STAR award for his work on the ALMA Test Facility. Congratulations, Jack! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The ASAC met 24-25 Feb in snowy Garching to consider rebaselining options for ALMA. A meeting to discuss results of recent prototype antenna testing was held 26-27 Feb in Munich. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ALMA thanks retiring ANASAC members David Hollenbach, Dan Jaffee, Luis Rodriguez, Dave Sanders, Phil Myers and Dick Plambeck as they rotate off of the committee. We welcom new members Paul Ho, Crystal Brogan, Andrew Baker, John Bally, Mel Wright, and Jonathan Williams onto the committee for a three year stint. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html ******************************************************************************* General Happenings Santiago: Leo Bronfman becomes Director of Cerro Calan of the University of Chile. The PMCS switch over to Santiago offices is complete (Feb 18th). Antonio Cruz, Cesar Ocampo, and Vicente Ruiz have started with the JAO 23 Feb, as members of the PMCS group. For the phone book: Vicente Ruiz: vruiz@alma.cl JAO office: +56-2-467-6148 Mobile in Chile: +56-8-549-7631 Cesar Ocampo: cocampo@alma.cl JAO office: +56-2-467-6144 Mobile in Chile: +56-9-779-1606 Antonio Cruz: acruz@alma.cl JAO office: +56-2-467-6145 Mobile in Chile: +56-9-519-2384 OSF: A contingent from AURA and Gemini visited the site on 25 February. Mass excavation at the OSF Technical Facilities continues. Crushing of excavation material in order to provide fill at the OSF Technical Facilities started on 17-Feb-2005 The construction of 22 beds at the Contractors Camp continues. Completion will be by end February 2005. Road maintenance with ESO equipment and contracted personnel resumed on 17-Feb-2005. Currently there are approximately 30 persons working at the site. Tucson: 1st prototype of revised LO Photonics Line Length Corrector (LLC) and 2nd Laser Synthesizer ready for testing. Second LLC under construction. Holdaway delivered to the ASAC a study of the increase of imaging capability as additional elements are added to the array. Phase drift measurements are underway in Tucson. ATF: Weather has hampered tests on the prototype antennas. Testing will be moving to a three week period of 10 second fast switching cycles on the antennas. Stand Back! This involves continuously Fast Switching (FS) the antennas for about 100,000 cycles; 24 hours per day for about 14 days or 42 8-hr shifts.. For safety reasons someone must be at the ATF continuously while this testing is going on. BackEnd is providing 4 people, System Engineering is providing 2 people while the Computing IPT is providing 9 people to monitor the ATF tests. Some out-of-focus holography tests and optical tests remain. AOC: Design review for revised layout of DTS Formatter to be presented next week. Revision addresses high speed issues. Evaluating alternate design for gain equalizers on ALMA IF downconverters. NAASC: Ed Fomalont joins the ALMA SSR as subsystem scientist for correlator. Wilson, Wootten and Beasley produced ALMA article for Valparaiso conference The Cool Universe: Observing Cosmic Beginnings held 2004 October 4-8. NTC: Work continued on the evaluation receiver electronics to allow phase locking of the 1st LO Gunn oscillators using the photonic LO reference. An essential test to resolve a cryostat leak rate issue is currently underway at NRAO. Preliminary results show that the cryostat has a substantial margin on cooling capacity. B6 (1.3mm) Pre-production Cartridge #1 tests continue. The 15 dB beam sidelobe decreased to 23 dB below beam peak in the cartridge test dewar after the IRAM IR filters were replaced with low-reflection GoreTex and absorber was placed on the horn mounting plate. Construction of pre-production cartridge #2 was nearly completed. The first Band 9 Warm Cartridge Assembly was delivered. Review of technical specifications for CVR (microwave reference) scheduled for CV 29 March. All Station Racks and Correlator Racks for the first quadrant have had bins and motherboards installed. ******************************************************************************* DAILY CALENDAR (Times EST ) Mon 28 9:30 AM-10:30 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon 11:30-12:30 Dr Norio Kaifu "Ongoing Astronomy and Future Plans of NAOJ" 12:40- 1:15 Dr Masato Ishiguro "ALMA Japan" Tue 1 March 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: Regular MMAImCal meeting for Science IPT Telecon cancelled Wed 2 2:00 PM-3:00 PM: NAASC meeting CV-ER311/TUC-550A/Soc280 Thu 3 9:30 AM-11:00 AM: Management IPT Teleconference 11:00 AM-12:00PM: CCB Telecon Fri 4 Sat 5 Sun 6 Mon 7 9:30 AM-10:30 AM: NA Project Office Staff Meeting 10:30 AM-11:30 AM: JAO IPT Telecon Tue 8 4:00 PM-5:00PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested parties) (434)296-7082 Agenda: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ Wed 9 11:00 AM-12:00 PM: Software Science Req. Group Teleconference Thu 10 9:30 AM-11:00 AM: Management IPT Teleconference Fri 11 Sat 12 Sun 13 ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ****************************** ALMA Calendar * 20 Mar 2005 -- Philadelphia ICASSP/IEEE meeting, Philadelphia * 22-24 March 2005 -- JAO/IPT Meeting, Garching * 29 March 2005 -- CVR review, Charlottesville * 4 April -- Executive meeting, Pasadena * 5-6 April 2005 -- AMAC Face-to-face meeting, Pasadena, CA. * 7-8 April 2005 -- ALMA Board Face-to-face meeting, Pasadena, CA. * 9 April 2005 -- Bilateral project meeting * 4 May 2005 -- WVR PDR, Gothenburg, Sweden ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS ******************************* ALMA Memo # 507 ALMA First LO Reference : Elimination of Large Phase Fluctuations due to lightwave polarization effects Authors: Bill Shillue, S. AlBanna This memo was mentioned previously but is still available only on almaedm via password. Soon one shoule be able to view a pdf version of ALMA Memo #507 at: http://www.alma.nrao.edu/memos/html-memos/alma507/memo507.pdf ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *******************************ALSO OF INTEREST******************************* SMA proposal deadline for next semester (MAY 1 - OCT 31) is MAR 17, 2005. Full funding for SCUBA-2 has been secured from PPARC. Congratulations to the JAC/JCMT! ****************************************************************************** Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the preceding biweekly period to Jennifer Neighbours or Al Wootten via e-mail (jneighbo@nrao.edu or awootten@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