12th IVS Directing Board meeting Summary notes Held at Makuhari, Japan (Prince Hotel) October 8, 2004 Notes by NRV, first version 041023 Attending: Wolfgang Schlueter, Arthur Niell, Chopo Ma, Ed Himwich, Kerry Kingham, Alan Whitney, Yasuhiro Koyama, Bill Petrachenko, Harald Schuh, Zinovy Malkin, Shigeru Matsuzaka, Patrick Wallace, Axel Nothnagel, Nancy Vandenberg ACTIONS: 1. Welcome (Wolfgang Schlueter) Franco Mantovani could not attend. The board reviewed and approved a proposal from the Institute of Applied Astronomy, St. Petersburg, Russia for a new IVS Network Station at Zelenchukskaya. 2. Reports and discussion 2.1. Chair's report (Wolfgang Schlueter) Activities since the last board meeting were reported. Correspondence: - Letter to the Assistant Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Canada, thanking them for hosting the third General Meeting. - Letter to the Rector of the University of Chile accepting their hosting of the fourth General Meeting. - Letter to Bjorn Engen supporting the importance of and our need for the Ny Alesund station. - Letter to University of Aukland confirming their acceptance as an Affiliate Member. Meetings: - The European VLBI Geodesy (EVG) group was established at a meeting held in Ottawa. Axel Nothnagel is chair, Ruediger Haas is secretary. - EPIGGOS (European Partners for IGGOS) is a platform for European space geodesy to speak with one voice. VLBI representatives are Axel Nothnagel and Wolfgang Schlueter as EVG and IVS chairs, respectively. - IGGOS Pilot Project meeting was held in Nice; Chopo Ma and Wolfgang Schlueter are on the committee. - The EVN board meeting was held at Onsala in May; Wolfgang Schlueter gave a report about IVS. - The service chairs Schlueter, Dow, Guertner, and Tavernier met to discuss inter-service synergy and harmonization on such items as station logs, names, met sensors. 2.2. Coordinating Center report (Nancy Vandenberg) Activities since the last board meeting were: - Publication of newsletters, Annual Report, Proceedings. - Update of the web site was completed in June. - Presentation of a poster about the value of geodetic VLBI in India. - Coordination of Mark 5 usage and routine e-VLBI startup. - Hired Coordinating Center Deputy Director, Dirk Behrend. - INDIGO and NGO projects were funded by NASA as one method for supporting the three services. Initial INDIGO activities are to assess service information and to evaluate user needs. NGO is preparing a report on how NASA's needs can be met with a newly designed geodetic network. 2.3. Observing Program Committee (Nancy Vandenberg) Issues discussed by the OPC recently include: - R1/R4 comparison of results. - R&D 2004 session plans. - K4/K5 weekend Wettzell-Tskuba Intensive - Mark5 weekday Wettzell-Kokee Intensive. - S2 network. Svetloe was added and is operating well. - 16-station TRF sessions started. - CRF observing and source monitoring program. - 2005 observing planning. The observing plan for 2005 is very similar to that of 2004. - CONT05. IVS should conduct these sessions occasionally because the set of data is highly visible and used by many researchers. Axel Nothnagel asked whether the sessions could be re- organized to start at 0 UT instead of around 18 UT. This would make the data handling for the IERS combination project easier. The reason for the 18 UT start time is that it optimizes the shipping logistics and therefore cannot be changed. 2.4. Analysis Coordinator report (Axel Nothnagel) At the Analysis Workshop in Ottawa, astronomers requested a consistent solution for CRF, TRF, and EOP, as well as daily values for EOP. Operations: Christoph Steinforth leaves 31 January 2005. The MAO Kiev solution was tested for inclusion in the IVS combination. Sinex combinations for the IERS combination pilot project are being done. Research: The time series project has shown that the different treatments of axis offset shows up in the combinations as the biggest effect. Any problems go into the station height. Combination is important because it forces rigorous comparisons. 2.5. Network Coordinator report (Ed Himwich) Issues: - Matera is down. IVS could send a support letter to ASI about the repair and the long term usefulness of Matera. - Simeiz's heads are finally repaired. - Ny Alesund is operating unattended most of the time with a single staff member on site. - Kokee is operating with a single az motor while the other one is being repaired. - Fairbanks' antenna control system failed, and was repaired. Retirement of experienced operators is a concern. Good news: - Metsahovi has a new S/X receiver and Mark 5. They will participate in some geodesy sessions. - Svetloe has a new Mark 5. - Zelenchukskaya will have a VLBA4/Mark 5 system this fall and will be available for geodesy sessions. - Badary will have its dedication in April. VLBI equipment for this station is being worked on. - Peru has a 32m former telecommunications antenna at Huancayo. It will have a K5 system and an S/X receiver in the next few years. - Fairbanks will get a Mark 5 system late this year and a Mark IV formatter. Clock offsets are important because they directly affect our estimates of UT1. The correlators are working on unifying the offsets to put the results on a consistent system. When the attempt will be made to align the TRF and CRF, the station timing will need to be calibrated. This will be a topic at the next Analysis Workshop. 2.6. Technology Coordinator report (Alan Whitney) VSI-E: The VSI-E draft specification is nearly fixed; the beta version is starting an evaluation period. The spec will eventually become 'VTP' or VLBI Transport Protocol. Working group: A technical working group was set up at the e-VLBI workshop. Its purposes are to: evaluate VSI-E hardware, software, and procedures; develop monitoring tools; provide expert assistance for e-VLBI. Mark 5A status: There are >100 Mk5 systems deployed at stations and correlators. Disk failure rate is about 0.5% each year. The upgrade to serial ATA is slow because it has been hard to find connectors that are rugged enough. Mark 5B status: Design is complete, PC board layout is in progress, testing should start in November. The upgrade kit should be available from Conduant by third quarter 2005. Digital BBCs: There are two possible paths. 1) Replacement of analog BBCs (EVN approach) with deployment planned by 2006; phase cal is still needed. 2) Polyphase filters which partition the IF into adjacent channels; phase cal is not needed but system temperatures cannot be measured in the traditional way. Some analysis of the tradeoffs is needed as to how much flexibility is required. NICT is working on a software BBC. 2.7. WG3 report (Alan Whitney, Arthur Niell) A 40-page draft report was prepared for the Working Group 3 meeting earlier this week. WG3 felt that the audience for the report is the geodetic community plus outsiders such as funding agencies. The report needs to be shortened. The deadline for the final report should be the next board meeting. The report should have a review by someone outside our direct community. 3. Items related to IAG, IAU, EVN 3.1 IAG 3.1.1 IAG Commission 1 (Harald Schuh) The IAG Executive Committee met in Nice. The new structure is in place with 4 commissions: Reference Systems, Gravity, Earth Rotation and Geodynamics, and Point Positioning. The Journal of Geodesy has a new editor in chief (W. Featherstone) with a more open philosophy to allow papers about applications to be submitted. Harald Schuh is a co- editor. 3.1.2. IAG Commission 1 (Chopo Ma) Commission 1 had a status meeting in Nice; Hermann Drewes is the chair. The structure is in place but activities have not yet started. Some subcommissions are set up, but not organized. 3.1.3 EVG (Axel Nothnagel) As a group, the EVG was founded in Ottawa. In Noto there will be a meeting and a charter established. 3.1.4 IERS issues (Axel Nothnagel) The working groups on combination, local ties, and ITRF datum are set up. For the IERS2005 campaign, weekly SINEX files are due. A solution including EOP, TRF, CRF will be made. Nicole Capitaine is the IAU representative to the IERS board as of January 1, 2005. The IVS board elected Axel and Chopo as the IVS representatives to the IERS board for the next 4-year period (through 31 December 2008). 3.2 IAU (Patrick Wallace) Two Joint Discussions were proposed for the 2006 General Assembly. 1) Nicole Capitaine proposed the topic of models for precession and nutation. D. Matsakis (USNO) proposed the topic of time and time scales. Division I was reorganized, and there was no consensus about where to put the ICRS working group. This was discussed at the Journees in Paris last month. The WG on Nomenclature and Fundamental Astronomy is trying to get expressive names for complex concepts. There is an explosive growth of acronyms. The Precession and Ecliptic WG (James Hilton chair) recommends replacing IAU200a model. The Redefinition of UTC (Dennis McCarthy chair) proposed to drop leap seconds with undue haste in 2007; perhaps 2022 is a better date. 4. IVS elections The terms for the representatives for Technology Development Centers (Arthur Niell) and Analysis and Data Centers (Zinovy Malkin) expire in February 2005. Kerry Kingham, Shigeru Matsuzaka and Nancy Vandenberg agreed to serve as the Election Committee. Wolfgang appointed Kerry to be the chair. The terms of the three At Large members also expire in February 2005. All three positions will be elected by the board, after the election of the representative positions is complete, with the purpose of balancing the board. 5. Technical reports 5.1 Met sensors location and calibration (Harald Schuh) The height of station sensors is needed to better than +/- 0.5m. Accuracy must be 0.3hPa. Met data is important and its visibility should be raised. The data should be discussed at the TOW. Robert Heinkelmann at IGG Vienna will continue to be the contact person for obtaining information from the stations and formatting it for the station configuration files. 5.2 SAGE (Arthur Niell) John LaBrecque (NASA Headquarters) requested a report on how to construct a prototype for a small antenna system. A group at Haystack and Goddard looked into existing antenna designs for the ATA 6m and DSN 12m dishes. The report used information in the WG3 report. The prototype would be a way to investigate wider bandwidths and different frequency ranges as well as the use of small antennas. 5.3 Troposphere status (Harald Schuh) Combinations are being made for the official IVS product. The MAO (Kiev) will be added next. We are looking for long term ZWD trends for climate studies. 5.4 K5 status (Yasuhiro Koyama) The K5 system is in routine use at Kashima 34, Tsukuba, Syowa, Koganei. The K5 software correlator is being used at Kashima, Tsukuba, JIVE, and ATNF. The K5 Intensive for e- VLBI is being done once per month. Procedures are being automated. The K5 system will be upgraded to Gb/s capability with up to 32 MHz channels. 5.5 S2 news (Bill Petrachenko) The review of the GSD (Geodetic Survey Division) has been going on since February. Management reviewed the first draft. At the correlator, 6-station status is gradually returning and the backlog has been reduced to 1.5 months. The capability to process disk recordings is needed at the correlator. Since Mk5B is not yet available, we purchased PC-EVN systems from Metsahovi. 5.6 Systems group? (Bill Petrachenko) A workshop on systems used by the IVS might be very useful. We need to answer some of the questions raised in the VLBI2010 report. Such a group could help improve the Geodetic VLBI technique by developing analysis techniques, tools, and R&D plans. Its products could be studies of error sources, simulation tools, and required improvements. The group could assist the OPC in studying issues related to resource usage and observing plans. A draft charter and member list will be prepared for board review. 6. Meetings. Upcoming: - next IVS board meeting in Noto, April 20 - Analysis Workshop in Noto, April 21-22 (1.5 days) - European VLBI meeting in Noto, April 22-23 (1.5 days) - EVG meeting in Noto (date not set) - EGU April 25-30 in Vienna - Next TOW is the week of May 9, at Haystack. - Fourth e-VLBI workshop in July in Sydney, Australia.