From: <jon_at_email.protected>
Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 16:59:59 +0200 (SAST)

Hi Tasso et al

On Wed, December 8, 2010 7:46 am, Tasso Tzioumis wrote:
>Our next telecon will be
>
>Thurs 09 December 2010
>03 UT ( 2pm AEDT, summer time).
>
>(Apologies to Hart for the very unfriendly hour..)

Ahem ... I shall hopefully be sound asleep (5am for me)

>Details and a draft agenda are on the wiki
>http://www.atnf.csiro.au/vlbi/wiki/index.php?n=Main.Telecon2010Dec09
>
>Please do edit or add other items to the agenda.

My 2c worth:

I notice the February VLBI date is in the middle of the LBA ops meeting
which might be tricky for some people who don't live in NZ! I might even
try make that, since my sister lives a short hop away in Christchurch.

Otherwise, I am happy to announce that the HartRAO 26m is fully functional
again, with all our receivers re-furbished and re-installed. We still
have some re-commissioning and re-calibration work to do (on the 6.7 GHz
methanol receiver in particular) and the pointing model still needs work.
A cooled dual-poln prime focus S/X coaxial receiver for the 15m is
currently undergoing integration in the lab, but significant integration
work in terms of IF conversion, transport, support and control electronics
is still necessary given that we are re-fitting the antenna RF side from
scratch. We estimate this might be available for VLBI use by the middle
of 2011.

We are awaiting delivery of a second Mark5 in early January which should
ease the data shipment woes from the last session as we will be able to
leave disk packs mounted for extended periods whilst they are downloaded
directly (and give ARCS access so they can handle the transfers for us :-)
Fortunately, keeping sufficient disk space around hasn't proved too much
of a hassle so far, and we should be able to afford to purchase a few disk
packs to live here for that purpose should it become necessary.

The actual VLBI recording session itself all went off without a hitch and
listening in on Skype (and real-time fringe detection) certainly made us
feel more confident about things. I also watched with interest that using
a phased array for VLBI is not the "sliced bread" (I don't know if that is
a SA specific idiom ... meaning latest, cleverest invention that puts
predecessors in the shade ... alternatively "answer to a maiden's prayer")
that our KAT friends like to make it out to be (for the politicians) - we
continue to have to defend our usefulness in the "KAT era".

Anyway, keep me posted on anything that affects us.

Regards
  Jon
Received on 2010-12-09 02:00:42