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CONTACT INFORMATION:
- Make sure that the contact information of the director/chief of VLBI, the friend of VLBI, technical friend of VLBI and the scheduler of your telescope is correct, see:
http://www.evlbi.org/contact/
http://www.evlbi.org/proposals/ToOtbl.html
EVNTech e-MAIL EXPLODER:
- Make sure that all persons involved in VLBI operations at your station subscribe to EVNtech:
http://www.evlbi.org/tog/evntech/evntech.html
TOG-MEETINGS:
- Make sure that relevant personnel from your station participate in TOG-meetings.
EVN SPARE PARTS:
- Make sure that your station invest in EVN spare parts. Directors agreed that each institute should invest ~3000 € in spare parts (see minutes from TOG-meeting at Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico, USA, 29/30 Aug 2011). The list of spare parts can be found here: https://deki.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/Working_Groups/EVN_TOG/EVN_spare_parts
EVN DISK-PACK POOL:
- Stations should spend 7000 €/year on the purchase of disks.
DISK-PACK SHIPMENT:
- Provide JIVE your preferred shipping company and the address for shipping disk packs.
- Prior to the session, JIVE will circulate a pland for disk-pack shipments to the stations based on (initial versions of) the block schedule and the on-hand disk packs wiki page (see para.1.a). This plan will outline the composition of the set of disk packs needed by each station to hold observations going to the various correlators (do not record experiments going to different correlators on a single pack).
- Recorded disk-packs from a session should be sent by a recognised integrated carrier. Because the mapping of experiments to disk packs can be many-to-many, sending recorded packs to the correlators can usually wait until after the session is completed -- but try to send these within a week of the end of the session. There may be special instructions in the disk-pack distribution plan discussed in para.1.b concerning holding onto individual pack in light of possible nearby out-of-session observations.
- Because of the advent of ftp fringe-test segments within individual experiments, special handling of the disk-packs containing NMEs is no longer required.
GPS-MASER READING:
- Provide the daily GPS-maser reading, uploaded to vlbeer. The script many stations uses can found on the TOG wiki:
https://deki.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/Working_Groups/EVN_TOG
IN ADVANCE OF SESSION:
- Station should make sure that the EVN status table is up-to-date:
http://www.evlbi.org/user_guide/EVNstatus.txt - Stations should make sure that the SCHED catalogue information is up-to-date.
- Stations should keep current their information in the TOG wiki page showing the number and capacities of on-hand disk packs. Contact Alef to gain access.
SESSION PREPARATION:
- Gunn to send email before each session when the final versions of all schedules are ready for download.
- All should check that Mk5 modules are placed squarely on a flat surface when received; otherwise connectors are easily damaged when bent 8 packs get inserted in Mark 5 units.
- All stations should condition disk packs if time permits, especially those which are to be used for 1 Gbps recording.
- All stations which do both astronomy and geodesy should clearly distinguish between astronomical and geodetic 8 packs and ensure there is no ”leakage” into the wrong pool, as mixing pools can create problems for scheduling.
- Disk packs should be shipped with one European and one US address on covers so they
can be easily returned in case a shipment is lost in transit. Put labels on all covers.
DURING SESSIONS:
- All stations should monitor Tcal throughout sessions. This can be done by running ANTABFS and plotting the results.
- All stations should forward FS error log files to Himwich in the event of a crash, including details of what the FS was doing when the crash occurred.
- All stations should try to run the FS diagnostic tests and investigate the results.
- All stations should ship disk packs as soon as they are full, at least once per week, following the Bologna rules.
POST SESSION FEEDBACK:
- All stations should look at pipeline results available from the EVN data archive pages at JIVE, in particular amplitude corrections found by selfcal on strong, compact calibrators. JIVE support scientists should include a comment on the quality of amplitude calibration results, especially to indicate cases where a problem may have occurred and the amplitude correction factors are unreliable.
- NME calibration files should be made available as early as possible. All stations should look at NME reports sent by JIVE. NMEs should be pipelined as early as possible and email sent to EVNtech when the results are available, to ensure feedback is provided well in advance of the next session.
- Stations must aim to produce ANTAB and RXG files within 2 weeks after the end of a session. For eVLBI, RXG files from the previous session can often be used. ANTAB files for eVLBI experiments should be produced as soon as possible as rapid analysis is often a high priority for these experiments. JIVE should inform Lindqvist of any problems, so that Directors can be asked to prioritise calibration if insufficient time is available at stations.
e-VLBI:
- If you plan to participate in e-VLBI. Make sure that your station follows the
“e-VLBI Station Recommendations”:
http://www.jive.nl/e-vlbi-station-recommendations
Last updated, March 3, 2014.
