BIWEEKLY CALENDAR OF THE ALMA PROJECT at NRAO July 5 - July 19, 2004 ******************************** THIS BIWEEK *********************************** Upper management meets in London for discussions of Japanese entry into the Project --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A minimini ALMA Week, involving IPT Leads, will be held in Charlottesville during the last part of the last week in September. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ASAC will meet in Charlottesville on 27-28 September. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Computing IPT holds its second Critical Design Review in Boulder. Committee members include Doxsey (Chair, STScI), Peter Quinn (ESO), Steve Wampler (NSO), Dave Silva (ESO), Nicole Radziwill (NRAO), Dick Sramek (NRAO), John Richer (Cambridge), Tom Wilson (WSO) and Al Wootten (NRAO). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- NA Project Management announced that the NA LO Group has been recombined with the BE IPT. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Past issues of this Calendar may be viewed at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html ******************************************************************************* General Happenings Chile Contracting for the foundation package of the AOS building is under way. The Design Development drawings and specifications (85% complete) for the antenna stations at the AOS, prepared by M3, are being reviewed. TUC Construction of the RF Simulator is continuing. Despite reports in The Point Source, Simon Radford still works in Tucson. However, relocation of the front end IPT staff from Tucson to the NTC is largely complete. NAASC Planning for this facility proceed. NTC The assembly of the first pre-production cryostat was completed one week ago in the U. K. modified B6(1.3mm) mixers (to improve sideband rejection) have been installed in the cartridge assembly and will be tested next week. The physical infrastructure of the North American integration center is close to complete. AOC The BE IPT is proceeding with the re-design of the TP digitizer to address new requirements given at the CDR:-design to accommodate 100% efficiency, boxcar integration, and faster readout requested during BE IPT CDR. Change requests approved include: o Change Cold Multiplier Ratio in Band 9 from X5 to X6 (ALMA-40.10.04.00-001-ACRE) o Request to extend upper frequency limit on band 7 (ALMA-40.02.07.00-003-A-CRE) o Inclusion of 90d phase switching in the ALMA first LO (ALMA-56.00.00.00-001-ACRE) DAILY CALENDAR (Times EDT) Mon 05 All day event: NRAO Holiday Tue 06 10:30 AM-12:00 PM: JAO/IPT Teleconference 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: 4:00 PM-5:00 PM: NAScienceIPT teleconference (open to all interested parties) (434)296-7082 Agenda: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ Wed 07 All day event: NRAO-ALMA Project Meeting 10:30 AM-12:00 PM: ASAC Teleconference Thu 08 All day event: Computing CDR2 All day event: ALMA Japanese Meeting 8:30 AM-10:00 AM: JAO Teleconference Fri 09 All day event: Computing CDR2 Sat 10 All day event: Computing CDR2 Mon 12 1:00 PM-2:30 PM: NA DH Teleconference Tue 13 Wed 14 11:00 AM-12:00 PM: Software Science Req. Group Teleconference Thu 15 8:30 AM-10:00 AM: JAO Teleconference Fri 16 Sat 17 ****************************** UPCOMING EVENTS ****************************** #ALMA Calendar * 8-10 July -- Software IPT CDR 2, Denver, Colorado * 5 August -- ALMA Board Telecon * 24 September -- ALMA/EU Meeting, Garching * 27-28 September -- ASAC face-to-face meeting, Charlottesville * 28-30 September (TBC) -- miniminiALMA Week, Charlottesville * 11-12 Oct -- AMAC Meeting, Florence, Italy ******************************* TECHNICAL NEWS ******************************* Simulations of the Effects of 1/f Gain Fluctuations on Measuring Linear Polarization with Linear Feeds on ALMA by M. A. Holdaway (NRAO) Abstract: Through polarization imaging simulations in aips++ which do not include instrumental polarization leakage of phase errors, we determine that 1/f gain fluctuations of magnitude 1e-3 in 300s will not prevent us from obtaining the fractional polarization specification of 0.001 for images of intermediate complexity. In very complicated objects, we expect there will be a limitation on the fractional polarization of weaker pixels. View a PDF copy of this Science IPT Study at: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/polreport2b.pdf ******************************************************************************* Please send information for upcoming calendars by Friday evening of the preceding biweekly period to Janet Bauer or Al Wootten via e-mail (jbauer@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 now available at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~awootten/mmaimcal/ALMACalendars.html