TOW Course Descriptions

Draft—Draft—Draft

There are five types of courses to be offered at the Technical Operations Workshop (TOW). All courses have a 90-minute time slot.

Operations Workshops are hands-on sessions with a maximum of about 5 participants each. Each member of the class will have an opportunity to participate actively in the training.
Maintenance Workshops are presentations to an audience of 10-20 people. The classes will begin with instruction and demonstration, and there may be some hands-on training. A large fraction of the time is allowed for discussion and question/answer periods. The subject matter includes a variety of topics.
Seminars are presentations including demonstrations to an audience of 20-60 people, depending on the topic. The subject matter includes a variety of special interest topics.
Lectures are intended for a general audience. The subject matter includes topics that we believe are of interest to everyone, or include announcements or information that everyone should be aware of. All attendees at the workshop will be scheduled for the lectures.

Operations Workshops

Operations Workshops are hands-on sessions with a maximum of about 5-7 participants each.

Title: Experiment Pre-checks and Operations
Teachers: Rich Strand and Mike Poirier
Description: This is a double-length class that will include both pre-checks and operations, which were covered in two separate classes in previous years. This class is offered with two formats. One format is for students with stronger English skills and will move at a faster pace. The other format is for students with weaker English skills, will move at slower pace, and have more pauses for material that may be difficult to understand in translation. Pre-checks: We will practice all of the procedures and operational tests that should be performed before each experiment to insure that all of the equipment is set up and working properly, starting with drudging the schedule file and ending with pre-session e-mail to ops. Pointing and gain calibration will be covered in separate workshops. This class is for people who use Mark IV, VLBA, or VLBA4 racks, and any type of recorder, including Mark 5 recorders. The class will use the Westford Mark IV system, with appropriate notes made about differences for other systems. Operations: We will practice experiment operations from starting the schedule to the post-session operational report and recovery from power failures and other disasters that can occur during a session. The use of the "logpl" program for plotting data from the log during and after the experiment will be demonstrated. This class will be held at Westford, using the Mark IV and Mark 5 recorders.

Title: Mark 5A Verification and Use
Teacher: Dan Smythe
Description: The verification and use of the Mark 5A system, both in standalone mode and operating with the Field System, will be described. The Mark 5A Field System commands required to record, play, and check data will be described and demonstrated, including test procedures to verify proper Mark 5A operation, and how to identify and correct common causes of improper operation. The course will also cover operational aspects of disk pack management at the stations including: erasing, conditioning, and trouble-shooting. Participants will learn how to identify and manage slow or failed disk drives in a disk pack, including when replacement is necessary and related topics like master/slave pairs, etc. Mark 5A systems and Field Systems will be available for hands-on use by participants.

Title: Mark 5A Disk Module Assembly and Testing
Teacher: Ken Wilson
Description: The "8-pack" Mark 5A disk modules may be purchased by stations as empty modules and the disks may be purchased separately. Then the modules will have to be assembled at the station by installing the disks into the module. Though the assembly of Mark 5A modules is quite straightforward, it is possible to make mistakes that cause improper operation, or one of more of the disks in the module may not operate properly. This workshop will lead participants through the assembly, test and conditioning of a disk module, alerting them to potential problems and how to identify and correct them.

Title: Cryogenic System and Receiver Maintenance
Teacher: Charles Kodak
Description: This workshop will address cryogenic system and receiver maintenance from the operational perspective. The goal is to improve system reliability, reduce downtime, and lower operational cost. Workshop participants will receive helpful hints for recovery from vacuum failures, contaminated helium systems, and the use of standardized maintenance procedures with some common pitfalls identified. General cryogenic "Do's and Don'ts" will be discussed. This session will not address the theory of cryogenics or the internal workings of a dewar.

Maintenance Workshops

Maintenance workshops are presentations or demonstrations to an audience of 10 or fewer people, with discussion and questions. There may be some hands-on training.

Title: Automated Pointing Models Using the FS
Teacher: Ed Himwich
Description: This class will be offered at two levels. One level will concentrate on basics for students who do not have much experience with the tools presented and want an introduction. The other level will be for students with more experience or want to address more advanced topics. The course will cover basic support for pointing measurements in the Field System. It will also include a demonstration of the "pdplt" program for analyzing pointing data. It will describe basic principles for configuring the mdlpo.ctl and ctlpo.ctl files that control the automated pointing data acquisition and delogging processes. Gain calibration will be covered in separate workshops.

Title: Antenna Gain Calibration
Teachers: Alastair Gunn and Andrea Orlati
Description: This course covers using ONOFF and GNPLT. Instruction will be given on the preparation and execution of ONOFF for the automatic acquisition of amplitude calibration data. Attendees will learn about the necessary procedure files, methods of measuring noise diode temperature and gain curves, and the interpretation of the resulting log files. The course will provide basic instruction on analyzing gain calibration data with GNPLT. Typical tasks (such as calibration of Tcal and gain curves) will be described step-by-step, a general discussion about GNPLT data analysis capabilities will also be held. Some time will be reserved to include the possibility of giving feedback and requesting improvements in the features of the gain calibration tools.

Title: Generating ANTAB Tsys Files (ANTABFS)
Teacher: Cormac Reynolds
Description: ANTABFS is used at astronomy stations to format Tsys data for use in analysis. Currently, this is not used for geodesy, but will be eventually. This course does not need to be attended by students from geodesy only stations. This class will describe use of the ANTABFS suite of scripts for producing well-calibrated and formatted system temperature and gain curve tables, suitable for use in the common data analysis packages. It will include some explanation of how the information is obtained and why good quality amplitude calibration is important; and some examples of typical errors will be presented. There will be a live demonstration of the scripts.

Title: RFI Sources, Identification, Mitigation
Teacher: Brian Corey
Description: This workshop will discuss sources of interference that might affect VLBI observations. Particular emphasis will be placed on the levels and types of RFI that are most harmful to experiments. Also discussed will be techniques to identify RFI and (the limited range of) techniques to deal with it.

Title: Spectrum Analyzer Testing of Analog RF Systems
Teacher: Brian Corey
Description: This course will review the fundamentals of measuring a power spectrum with an analog RF or FFT-based spectrum analyzer. Applications to VLBI system testing and trouble-shooting will be discussed and demonstrated, with a particular emphasis on phase noise and modulation in LO and phase calibration systems. The detection of spurious phase cal signals with a spectrum analyzer will also be treated, along with the diagnosis and cure of such signals.

Title: Rack Maintenance
Teacher: Tom Buretta
Description: This workshop will cover checkout and maintenance aspects of the VLBI electronic racks. Areas to be covered include formatter checkout, VC/BBC performance, and IF distributor checkout.

Title: Mark 5A Software Updates, Upgrades and Maintenance
Teacher: John Ball
Description: Software maintenance for Mark-5A systems is an on-going task to be conducted at each station. This workshop will describe and demonstrate the procedures for updating the Mark-5A software, for checking and testing the result, and for operating the Mark5A in a stand-alone mode, that is without a Field System or a correlator. Tutorials will be offered for participants to follow, and Mark-5A systems will be available for hands-on use.

Title: New OS for Mark 5 System
Teacher: Jason SooHoo
Description: The Mark 5 VLBI and eVLBI community needs a stable and up-to-date OS to help continue the development of technologies and maintain a secure environment. After considerable investigation, we have selected a Debian-based distribution as the new OS and will explain the deployment and upgrade for current Mark 5 systems out in the community. Moving the Mark 5 to a Debian-based OS will make the Mark 5 more similar to FS, which is also Debian based. The reasons for moving to the new OS will be explained, as well as the details of making the changeover and the differences that will be encountered.

Title: General Station Troubleshooting and CONT05 Station Verification
Teachers: Ed Himwich and Brian Corey
Description: This course is intended to provide a description of the tests that stations should periodically perform to evaluate the performance of their station. In particular, stations that are expecting to be participating in CONT05 should perform these checks as soon as possible after the TOW meeting. These checks are more advanced than the ones covered in the Experiments Pre-checks and Operations course, but most are covered in more detail in other courses. This course works through the list of checks, explains the reasons for the tests, provides some tips on performing them, and a chance to ask questions about them. In order to have a full grounding in this material it is recommended that anyone signing up for this course should also take some other courses unless they are already familiar with the material in these courses. The recommend other courses are: Mark5A Verification and Use, RFI Sources, Identification, Mitigation, Phase Calibration Basics, and Spectrum Analyzer Testing of Analog RF Systems. Some additional material on troubleshooting not covered in other courses will be presented here.

Seminars

Seminars are presentations including demonstrations to an audience of 10 or more people, depending on the topic.

Title: Using S2 Systems
Teacher: Mario Berube
Description: The Canadian S2 system is now used in E3 sessions by 5 stations to determine EOPs every month. The lecture will cover the operational aspects of the S2 Data Acquisition System. Specific topics: design, DASOS, frequency switching, PCal, Tsys, PCFS commands, operational issues. This course will be useful for stations who have an S2 system or are expecting to get one. Stations participating in the IVS E3 sessions should attend this demonstration.

Title: Introduction to the K5 System
Teacher: Yasuhiro Koyama
Description: This lecture will describe the K5 system being developed in Japan. The entire data acquisition functions and correlator functions can be performed on a common PC system running on Linux or FreeBSD. The K5 system is now regularly used at IVS stations in Japan and at Syowa station in Antarctica. Actual data acquisition and some post-observation data checks will be demonstrated.

Title: Correlator Operations
Teacher: Mike Titus and Roger Cappallo
Description: This lecture/demo will summarize the stages a typical experiment passes through in its life cycle at the correlator and demonstrate the process of setting up production processing for a geodetic VLBI experiment. A laundry list of checks performed at various stages (especially setup) and their desired outcomes will be reviewed, along with descriptions of a few sample problems and how they are compensated for at processing time. Tips on how stations can help facilitate correlator setup and processing will also be covered. The impact of increasing use of Mark 5 recordings on correlator operations will be discussed.

Title: Intro to Linux
Teachers: Jonathan Quick
Description: This course will cover the basics of using Linux (or any UNIX system) for day-to-day housekeeping operations.

Title: Linux System Administration
Teachers: Jonathan Quick
Description: This course will cover system configuration and management issues outside the normal course of experiment operations. The "fsadapt" program which can be used to simplify many of these tasks will be described.

Title: Pointing and Single Dish Amplitude Calibration Theory
Teacher: Alastair Gunn
Description: In this course students will learn why accurate pointing corrections must be known for all parts of the sky to be observed, and how pointing errors affect geodetic and astronomical results. Students will learn how SEFD and system temperature measurements are related, how to check the focus, how to make SEFD measurements, how to measure a gain curve, which sources are best for the SEFD measurements, how weather can affect the measurements and results, and how the SEFD measurements are used for data analysis and scheduling. We will also discuss measurement equipment and how it may affect the results if care is not taken.

Title: Timing Systems
Teachers: Tom Clark and Rick Hambly
Description: This presentation will discuss all the reasons for needing high-accuracy time and frequency in VLBI. This will include a discussion of all the "clocks" used in VLBI (Hydrogen Masers, GPS timing clocks, the clocks inside the Field System computer and the clock information needed by the correlators) and how they need to be tied together in order to guarantee successful VLBI measurements.

Title: Writing Station Specific FS Code
Teacher: Ed Himwich
Description: This course will cover useful information about how to implement station specific code to work with the FS. This includes the programs "antcn" and "stqkr" primarily, but also "cheks", "sterp" and also how to add station-specific help pages. We intend to provide only one level of instruction for this topic. It will combine "beginning", "intermediate", and "advanced" topics, but perhaps lean towards "beginning" and "intermediate". There should be time to deal with some detailed problems at all levels. You should have some experience with FORTRAN and C if you sign up for this section. A separate ad hoc section for discussing implementation of specific features at audience request is also available as "Topics in FS station software coding".`

Title: Topics in FS Station Software Coding
Teacher: Ed Himwich
Description: This session will be organized as a group discussion/demonstration. It will provide an opportunity for people to present questions they have about implementing specific station features and to get advice on how to do it. A separate lecture covering more of the basics of station software coding is covered in the "Writing station specific FS code" lecture.

Title: Phase Calibration Basics
Teacher: Brian Corey
Description: The phase calibration system is the primary means for ensuring that instrumental effects in the receiver and VLBI terminal do not corrupt the group delay measurements. This course will cover the basic concepts and hardware implementation of the calibration system, including the Mark IV cable measurement system. The nature and causes of spurious signals, which can degrade the calibration accuracy, will be described.

Title: Mark IV Decoder
Teacher: Roger Cappallo
Description: The Mark IV decoder is a useful diagnostic instrument in Mark IV and VLBA4 systems. In this workshop the basic architecture, functions, and operation of the decoder will be described, and its capabilities in measuring recorder parity error rates, sample state statistics, and phase cal signal amplitude and phase will be demonstrated. The feature set of the current firmware revision will be discussed, as well as potential future enhancements.

Title: Hydrogen Maser Monitoring and Maintenance
Teacher: Irv Diegel
Description: The intent of this presentation is to provide VLBI personnel with an overview of the hydrogen maser and its use in VLBI. The discussion will be generic so as to accommodate the different types of masers used throughout the VLBI network. Topics will include block diagram analysis of the physics and electronics systems as well as generalized operational procedures.

Title: Software Correlation
Teacher: Yasuhiro Koyama
Description: This seminar will explain how to perform software correlation by using the K5 software correlation program suite. The actual correlation process will be demonstrated step by step with observed data sets. These steps include a-priori parameter calculation, fringe search, visualization of processed data, and distributed software correlation for mass processing.

Lectures

Lectures are intended for a general audience. All attendees at the workshop are welcome to attend the lectures.

Title: The Early Days of VLBI
Teacher: Tom Clark
Description: This lecture will outline the history of VLBI with special emphasis on the early days. The subject matter will be clad into anecdotes and funny tales, but still will furnish a better understanding of the origins of VLBI.

Title: Mark 5B and e-VLBI Overview
Teacher: Alan Whitney
Description: This presentation will describe the characteristics of the Mark 5B VLBI data system, now nearing completion of development at Haystack Observatory. In addition, a brief overview of the progress and prospects for e-VLBI will be addressed, including the VSI-E specification being developed for international interchange of e-VLBI data.

Title: Impact of Operations on Data Analysis
Teacher: Ed Himwich
Description: This course will describe the effect on geodetic data analysis of various problems during data acquisition. Problems such as clock breaks, bad tracks, parity errors, pointing errors, warm receivers, and late starts will be covered.

Title: Science Overview
Teacher: Arthur Niell
Description: An overview of the scientific goals of geodetic and astrometric programs will be presented. Particular emphasis will be placed on reference frames which are the fundamental products of VLBI.

Title: IVS Observing Program
Teacher: Dirk Behrend
Description: This lecture will give a short introduction into the IVS and will describe the current Observing Program. Some emphasis will be put on the IVS product delivery goals and their implications for station observing time, correlator, and analysis requirements.

Title: Field System Near Term Future Plans
Teacher: Ed Himwich
Description: This presentation will cover the immediate and long-term plans for Field System development. The ongoing collaboration and cooperation on the Field System among various groups will be described.