Notes from TOW Teachers dinner, May 9, 2013 Notes by D. Behrend Notes are in order of teacher remarks, as we went around the table. Relevant comments are indicated by rectangular brackets. Individual Remarks ================== Rich Strand, Pre-checks and operations, Hardware maintenance, Feedback: This TOW went exceptionally well. The Pre-checks and operations classes were very good with very good questions. Of the two Hardware classes the first was good and the second ok. Here it is challenging to find a good balance between the skill sets of the different students. The Feedback session was very vocal; the response to the feedback was great. TOW is a very useful meeting. Mike Poirier, Pre-checks and operations, Hardware maintenance, Feedback: It is good to do the Pre+Ops class as a team. In the second Hardware maintenance class the students were tired and well saturated. The Feedback session had a real floor discussion this time. The items were addressed in the response. The TOW was one of the better ones. Alessandra Bertarini, Practical correlation: This TOW was very good. Station folks were represented in the correlator class. The students said that they learned a lot in the correlator class. I will spread the word among the Ph.D. students in Bonn about this meet- ing. The DBBC class should also be taught more hands-on. Mike Titus, Practical correlation: More hands-on things are important. The need to perform tasks engages the students more. The instrumentation lab was inadequate for the class; perhaps a conference room would be more appropriate. Gino Tuccari, DBBC Setup and Operations: I was not satisfied with my own class; it was too general. It needs a more operational orientation. [Michael: The class could be in a similar fashion as at the TOG meetings.] Chet Ruszczyk, e-VLBI Overview, RDBE Setup and Operations, Mark 5 and RDBE OS Software Development: The TOW went fairly well. Students like to hear about issues. I generally received positive feedback. [Mike P.: In the future the RDBE may become part of the Pre+Ops class.][Arthur: In two years, Westford will be full- time broadband.][Dan: Remote operations allow to setup any system in the field via the Internet.] I had no opportunity to take other classes. Mamoru Sekido, RFI Sources, Identification, Mitigation: I reported about the experience with RFI at Kashima. Hopefully this was helpful to other stations. It was a more relaxed setting, as I shared the teaching load with Brian. I learned a lot from others. The feedback session is very important. Brian Corey, phase cal, RFI, FFT, decoder, advanced pre-checks: I very much enjoyed doing the RFI class together with Sekido-san. I covered the theory and Sekido-san presented a practical application. In the combined phase cal and PF testing class, I had too much material to cover. I would like to make this more hands-on, perhaps by installing an RDBE system. The advanced pre-checks class is getting out of date and needs to be reworked with RDBE and DBBC utilities. Arthur Niell, Broadband and the Evolution of the VGOS Network: I only had one lecture. An additional benefit of the TOW meeting is the interaction with a lot of people in the off-time. We had an informal meeting of the source structure group. Uwe Bach, Amplitude Calibration Theory, ANTABFS: I liked the meeting very much. I'm the VLBI friend at Effelsberg since 2008. I attended my first TOW four years ago. I took over the classes (and class material) from Bob Campbell and Alistair Gunn. Ed Himwich, Pointing, FS Coding, Advanced pre-checks, various lectures: It was a really good thing to see new people (students and teachers). I would have liked to see a demonstration of the RDBE with Mark 6 as well as the DBBC. The material for the advances pre-checks class is very stale. In similar lines also the material for the FS coding class is stale and needs updating. I did the cablewrap class to do something different. It was specialized but useful; maybe once is enough. In terms of class assignments, it may be useful to have a common curriculum with mandatory classes to "enforce" certain classes to be taken. Thanks to Heidi and Dirk for the organization. Michael Lindqvist, Antenna Gain Calibration: My class that covered ONOFF and GNPLT did not have many students. But the importance of the class will increase with VLBI2010. We should anticipate more students for mine and Uwe's classes. Dirk Behrend, Program coordination and Web site: The number of students went slightly down over the last several TOWs. We may need to advertise the meeting more strongly. I concur with the previous statements that we should have more hands-on classes. [Dan: for the general lectures Conference A may be too small; perhaps a tent with a speaker system would help.] Tom Clark, Timing, Software Defined Radios (SDR) for Phase Cal and RFI: In the timing class there seems to be more interest in the actual setup procedure. In order to get more hands-on activity going, I suggest to set up tables in the style of old country fairs lending itself to hard- ware demonstrations, for instance, in the library. [Irv: this may be a good idea for the end of the TOW.] Dan Smythe, Mark 5 Advanced Topics: I updated the class to include Mark 5C. In general, it went well. I had a list of topics to be covered and got about half-way through. In the class room I had Mark 5B; other equipment was at other places at Haystack. [Chet: I appreciate very much Dan's class and notes.] Alan Whitney, VLBI Basics, Mark 6 System Description: The most interesting topic for me was the transition to the Mark 6 system. We developed a plan and look forward to feedback from the community. Heidi Johnson, local coordinator: I enjoyed this TOW more than previous ones without any particular reason. Perhaps it has to do with with a reduced language problem this time. John Gipson, Science overview, sked: I gave two different class: the installments of the sked class and a lecture about VLBI science. Thanks to Heidi for preparing the eggs. Irv Diegel, Maser: The maser continues to be of interest. I had 18-20 people spread over two classes. [Rich: It is perhaps useful to shorten the class length to perhaps 45 min.] I included some added features this time. [Tom: for the next TOW it may be useful to combine the Maser and Timing classes.] [Irv: I fully agree with this suggestion.] Richard Hambly, Timing: We organized a live demo of our equipment in our non-teach time. There was quite some interest, especially from mm-VLBI folks. Through this interaction I learned things that should be included in the next timing class. Jason SooHoo, e-transfer operations: I put the e-transfer class together rather late. Haystack does e-transfers somewhat different to the way Bonn does it. I first brought the theory and then a demonstration. It went quite well. Some work may be needed to improve the initial version.