RDV84 (Astrometric/Geodetic VLBA-84) 2010 DEC. 07 17:30 Day 341 Notes prepared by David Gordon, John Gipson, and Ed Himwich, NVI/GSFC Special notes for this experiment ================================= This session will use 2-bit sampling again, as in the last few RDV's. Frequencies and channel bandwidths (8 MHz) are the same as in previous RDV's. The bit rate will be 256 Mbits/sec. The 8 MHz, 2-bit sampling is preferable to 16 MHz, 1-bit sampling because the 16 MHz filters are not very good at the non-VLBA stations. The data will be correlated at the VLBA using the DiFX software correlator. The 6 non-VLBA stations (HARTRAO, KASHIM34, KOKEE, NYALES20, TSUKUB32, and WETTZELL) should see the "Special operations notes for non-VLBA stations" section below for special instructions. Kokee and Wettzell will drop out of the RDV84 session at ~18:15 UT to observe the daily UT1 Intensive and will resume RDV84 at ~19:45 UT. There are no full network scans because of the wide distribution of stations. However, at the beginning and again near the end of the schedule, there is a 300 second nearly full network scan without HARTRAO and a 300 second scan with HARTRAO. These are designed as fringe-finding scans. There are also a few nearly full network scans (without HARTRAO) in the middle of the schedule. These scans are: ource Start DURATIONS name yyddd-hhmmss Br Fd Hh Hn Kb Kk Kp La Mk Nl Ny Ov Pt Sc Ts Wz 1642+690 10341-173000| 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300| 2059+034 10341-173649| 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300| 1806+456 10341-202012| 49 49 45 62 110 49 49 65 49 117 49 49 54 52 117| 0454+844 10341-210238| 326 480 480 480 480 412 420 480 480 480 389 422 480 480 480| 1806+456 10341-220953| 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200| 2229+695 10342-031623| 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200| 1357+769 10342-095605| 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200| 1642+690 10342-171455| 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300| 2013+163 10342-172149| 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300 300| Additional Notes: - Two-bit sampling is used. - In this RDV, all stations will record on Mark5A, except Kashima and Tsukuba. Kashima and Tsukuba will record on K5 and the data will be later transferred to Mark5A. - The synch time for the VLBA DiFX correlator using Mark5 is only a few seconds. Because of this, the 'early' start has been reduced to 10 seconds. - The fluxes use our most recent models. Purpose ======= This is the sixth of six coordinated astrometric/geodetic experiments in 2010 that use the full 10-station VLBA plus up to 10 geodetic stations capable of recording VLBA modes. This year's series is a continuation of the highly successful RDV series begun in 1997. These experiments are being coordinated by the geodetic VLBI programs of three agencies: USNO, NASA, and NRAO. The experiments have been designed so that the same data set may be used by each agency for its particular goals. USNO and Bordeaux Observatory will perform imaging and correction for source structure. These sources will establish a set of core reference sources with known structure and precisely known positions. These data will provide the basis for evaluating the long term stability of the radio reference frame and the ultimate accuracy of wide angle astrometric measurements of extragalactic radio sources using VLBI. NASA will analyze this data to determine a high accuracy terrestrial reference frame. The data will incorporate the VLBA stations into the VLBI reference frame through the inclusion of other geodetic stations for which we have long histories. The data will also produce the most accurate Earth rotation results ever produced. We will use these data to make accurate absolute measurements of UT1. NRAO will use these sessions to provide a service to users who require high quality positions for a small number of sources. While the quality of these results will be high, the observing and data reduction overhead required will be minimal because a small number of such sources can be incorporated into a session of the regular geodetic observations, instead of requiring special observations. Sources for this series of experiments will be selected using the proposed approach. For each experiment we will select a set of 70-80 sources from the pool of geodetic, astrometric, and monitoring sources. About 40-50 of these will remain the same from experiment to experiment and will be chosen to optimize the goals of the three groups. A small number of poorly observed and/or new requested sources may also be included to obtain or improve their positions. Schedule information ==================== This is a new schedule generated by David Gordon at GSFC using sked. Schedule file name: rdv84.skd On ftp.aoc.nrao.edu (aspen): VLBA Pointing files: rdv84crd.br rdv84crd.fd rdv84crd.hn rdv84crd.kp rdv84crd.la rdv84crd.mk rdv84crd.nl rdv84crd.ov rdv84crd.pt rdv84crd.sc Summary file for correlator: rdv84.sksum Sked file: rdv84.skd Text file: rdv84.txt Vex file: rdv84.vex At IVS Data Center (ftp://cddisa.gsfc.nasa.gov/vlbi/ivsdata/aux/2010/rdv84) Sked file: rdv84.skd Text file: rdv84.txt This experiment uses the 10 VLBA stations and 6 IVS stations. The IVS stations are: HARTRAO, KASHIM34, KOKEE, NYALES20, TSUKUB32, and WETTZELL. Below is the sked summary: Key: Br=BR-VLBA Fd=FD-VLBA Hh=HARTRAO Hn=HN-VLBA Kb=KASHIM34 Kk=KOKEE Kp=KP-VLBA La=LA-VLBA Mk=MK-VLBA Nl=NL-VLBA Ny=NYALES20 Ov=OV-VLBA Pt=PIETOWN Sc=SC-VLBA Ts=TSUKUB32 Wz=WETTZELL Br Fd Hh Hn Kb Kk Kp La Mk Nl Ny Ov Pt Sc Ts Wz Avg % obs. time: 46 46 39 43 38 35 46 46 42 45 45 45 46 42 33 36 42 % cal. time: 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 4 % slew time: 26 25 47 23 36 20 26 25 29 24 16 27 25 24 16 8 25 % idle time: 23 24 9 29 20 40 23 24 24 26 34 23 24 29 46 51 29 total # scans: 334 337 288 318 360 326 348 342 356 331 308 345 341 316 365 294 331 # scans/hour : 14 14 12 13 15 14 15 14 15 14 13 14 14 13 15 12 14 Avg scan (sec): 119 119 118 117 92 94 114 116 101 118 128 112 117 116 79 107 109 # data tracks: 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 # Mk5 tracks: 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 Total GBytes: 1547 1567 1326 1451 1325 1219 1553 1553 1424 1528 1525 1514 1560 1431 1169 1235 1433 Total GB(M5): 1375 1393 1178 1290 1178 1083 1380 1380 1266 1358 1355 1346 1386 1272 1039 1097 1274 Total GBytes (M5) recorded: 20378.1 # OF OBSERVATIONS BY BASELINE | Br Fd Hh Hn Kb Kk Kp La Mk Nl Ny Ov Pt Sc Ts Wz StnTotal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Br| 253 48 206 88 140 274 266 182 251 138 263 269 167 105 74 2724 Fd| 74 234 55 119 305 325 166 283 101 252 323 218 71 83 2862 Hh| 123 75 0 53 71 0 86 151 25 69 150 65 231 1221 Hn| 35 65 215 235 105 264 148 181 231 262 52 138 2494 Kb| 190 72 55 170 49 122 99 58 18 324 71 1481 Kk| 144 119 287 98 55 177 122 44 181 25 1766 Kp| 314 189 270 108 290 319 197 86 68 2904 La| 166 295 111 264 336 215 71 85 2928 Mk| 144 47 225 170 88 190 17 2146 Nl| 132 233 290 228 68 103 2794 Ny| 93 111 132 108 192 1749 Ov| 267 156 115 46 2686 Pt| 212 74 82 2933 Sc| 34 144 2265 Ts| 58 1602 Wz| 1417 Number of 2-station scans: 165 Number of 3-station scans: 124 Number of 4-station scans: 153 Number of 5-station scans: 96 Number of 6-station scans: 46 Number of 7-station scans: 41 Number of 8-station scans: 45 Number of 9-station scans: 53 Number of 10-station scans: 64 Number of 11-station scans: 75 Number of 12-station scans: 31 Number of 13-station scans: 9 Number of 14-station scans: 4 Number of 15-station scans: 7 Number of 16-station scans: 0 Total # of scans, observations: 913 17986 SOURCE SELECTION ================ There are a total of 91 sources scheduled in this session. Among them, 30 sources are from the astrometric monitoring list, 45 are from the geodetic monitoring list, and 5 are previously observed sources that have only a few observations. There are also 5 sources requested by Adam Deller being reobserved to improve their positions and maps. And there are 6 new sources requested by L. Petrov. The requested sources are observed in two scans each. The requested sources are: 1800-045 18 03 09.4276 -04 33 02.799 Deller/J1803-0433 1815-111 18 18 19.3139 -11 08 48.320 Deller/J1818-1108 1829-106 18 32 20.8364 -10 35 11.201 Deller/J1832-1035 1832-113 18 35 19.5759 -11 15 59.315 Deller/J1835-1115 1910+052 19 12 54.2576 +05 18 00.420 Deller/J1912+0518 0040+517 00 43 08.79 +52 03 34.4 Petrov/J0043+5203 0552+393 05 55 56.67 +39 22 07.4 Petrov/Wrong apriori 0809+483 08 13 36.07 +48 13 01.9 Petrov/J0813+4813 0951+699 09 55 51.88 +69 40 46.1 Petrov/J0955+6940 1438-390 14 41 15.13 -39 13 48.3 Petrov/Flat-spectrum/J1441-3913 1832+687 18 32 35.52 +68 48 07.2 Petrov/J1832+6848 SCHEDULING ALGORITHMS ===================== This schedule uses the "SRCEVN SQRT" mode of Sked. In the absence of any constraints, Sked will preferentially observe strong sources that have high visibility. This mode attempts to smooth out the number of observations per source. RECORDING MODE and FREQUENCIES ============================== NOTE: THERE ARE SOME CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS FOR 2-BIT SAMPLING. The data will be recorded using the following setup: 8 channels 1:2 fan-out 16 MHz sample rate 2-bit sampling This recording mode is designated 256-8(RDV). There is no correlator speed-up factor. The frequency sequence covers 490 MHz at X-band and 140 MHz at S-band using 4 channels in each band. This span fits in one VLBA receiver passband but it uses both the high and low parts of the geodetic receivers. Because only 8 channels total are available when observing with the VLBA stations, a wider spanned bandwidth is not advisable. These tables list the setup for the VLBA stations, the geodetic stations with K5 back ends, and the geodetic stations with Mark IV back ends. These are the SAME frequencies used in all the standard RDV sessions. VLBA | Kashima34 M B Chan Sky Tracks LO IF BBC | LO IF BBC # # 1 X 8405.99 2, 4, 6, 8 7900 B 505.99| 7580 1 825.99 3 7 2 X 8475.99 10,12,14,16 7900 B 575.99| 7580 1 895.99 4 8 3 X 8790.99 18,20,22,24 7900 B 890.99| 8080 3 710.99 5 1 4 X 8895.99 26,28,30,32 7900 B 995.99| 8080 3 815.99 6 2 5 S 2232.99 3, 5, 7, 9 2900 A 667.01| 1520 2 712.99 9 15 6 S 2262.99 11,13,15,17 2900 A 637.01| 1520 2 742.99 10 16 7 S 2352.99 19,21,23,25 2900 A 547.01| 1520 2 832.99 13 11 8 S 2372.99 27,29,31,33 2900 A 527.01| 1520 2 852.99 14 12 M#: Main recording channel number B#: Backup recording channel number VLBA | TSUKUB32 Chan Sky Tracks LO IF BBC | LO IF BBC # 1 X 8405.99 2, 4, 6, 8 7900 B 505.99| 7680 1 725.99 3 2 X 8475.99 10,12,14,16 7900 B 575.99| 7680 1 795.99 4 3 X 8790.99 18,20,22,24 7900 B 890.99| 8080 3 710.99 5 4 X 8895.99 26,28,30,32 7900 B 995.99| 8080 3 815.99 6 5 S 2232.99 3, 5, 7, 9 2900 A 667.01| 1600 2 632.99 9 6 S 2262.99 11,13,15,17 2900 A 637.01| 1600 2 662.99 10 7 S 2352.99 19,21,23,25 2900 A 547.01| 1600 2 752.99 13 8 S 2372.99 27,29,31,33 2900 A 527.01| 1600 2 772.99 14 VLBA | Kokee Chan Sky Tracks LO IF BBC | LO IF BBC # 1 X 8405.99 2, 4, 6, 8 7900 B 505.99| 7600 A 805.99 3 2 X 8475.99 10,12,14,16 7900 B 575.99| 7600 A 875.99 4 3 X 8790.99 18,20,22,24 7900 B 890.99| 8100 C 690.99 5 4 X 8895.99 26,28,30,32 7900 B 995.99| 8100 C 795.99 6 5 S 2232.99 3, 5, 7, 9 2900 A 667.01| 1500 B 732.99 9 6 S 2262.99 11,13,15,17 2900 A 637.01| 1500 B 762.99 10 7 S 2352.99 19,21,23,25 2900 A 547.01| 1500 B 852.99 13 8 S 2372.99 27,29,31,33 2900 A 527.01| 1500 B 872.99 14 VLBA | HartRAO, NYALES20, Wettzell Chan Sky Tracks LO IF BBC | LO IF VC VC# Patch 1 X 8405.99 2, 4, 6, 8 7900 B 505.99| 8080.0 1 325.99 3 H 2 X 8475.99 10,12,14,16 7900 B 575.99| 8080.0 1 395.99 4 H 3 X 8790.99 18,20,22,24 7900 B 890.99| 8580.1 3 210.89 5 3(H) 4 X 8895.99 26,28,30,32 7900 B 995.99| 8580.1 3 315.89 6 3(H) 5 S 2232.99 3, 5, 7, 9 2900 A 667.01| 2020.0 2 212.99 9 L 6 S 2262.99 11,13,15,17 2900 A 637.01| 2020.0 2 242.99 10 H 7 S 2352.99 19,21,23,25 2900 A 547.01| 2020.0 2 332.99 13 H 8 S 2372.99 27,29,31,33 2900 A 527.01| 2020.0 2 352.99 14 H Special operations for non-VLBA stations: ========================================= HartRAO, Ny Alesund, and Wettzell: These stations have Mark IV racks. Please use the procedures generated by DRUDG. VCs 3 & 4 are used at X-band with IF 1. VCs 5 & 6 are used at X-band with IF 3. VCs 9, 10, 13, & 14 are used at S-band with IF B. The IF3 command in the procedure IFDSX assumes that VC3 and VC10 will be patched to High. Please verify that the switches for your IF3 module are wired this way, and if they are not please edit the IF3 command to change the switches. The standard wiring is described in "help=if3". If you have questions about the wiring, please contact Brian Corey at Haystack. Kashima34 and Tsukuba: These stations use K4-2 VCs and a K5 recorder. Use the procedures generated by DRUDG. Be sure to set your rack type to K4-2, not K4-2/M4, if that change has not already been made. Please note you will need to comment out the incorrect VC commands in the VCSX8 procedure after the comment about these converters being present, but not used. This will be corrected in a future DRUDG release. Please also set the attenuation and detector appropriately in the va=.. and vb=... commands. The tpicd commands in SX8M12A should be benign and do not need to be commented out unless they cause a problem. If you wish to record back-up channels, please add appropriate valo=..., va=... vblo=... and vb=... commands in the VCSX8 procedure. Kokee: This station has a VLBA4 back end. Use the procedures generated by DRUDG. BBCs 3, 4, 5, & 6 are used at X-band with IFs A and C. BBCs 9, 10, 13, & 14 are used at S-band with IF B. CHECKLIST for non-VLBA stations =============================== Please follow the checklist below to ensure you have done all the necessary steps for this experiment: 1. Make .prc file with DRUDG and check them out, or use the procedures from last session. Check out parity check procedures. 2. Make the .snp file with DRUDG. 3. Set up your system to monitor the clocks with the "gps-fmout" or "fmout-gps" commands. If you have questions about this, please contact Ed Himwich as soon as possible. 4. Send a "ready" message an hour or so before the experiment to the ivs-ops mail list. Copy analysts@nrao.edu on your ready message. 5. Send a "start" message soon after you have started recording. Copy analysts@nrao.edu on the message. 6. At the end of the experiment, send a "finish" message summarizing how the experiment was conducted. Copy analysts@nrao.edu on your message. 7. Transfer your log files to your normal log file data center. The directories for three possible servers are listed below: ftp cddisin.gsfc.nasa.gov/ivsincoming directory on vlbeer: dec10 directory on aspen: /astronomy/dec10/rdv84 or /home/archive/e2e/archive/operations/VLBA/observe/dec10/rdv84 NOTE: If you don't normally use aspen, you should not put your log file on that server. The VLBA correlator knows where to find your log files. Correlation =========== This experiment will be correlated at the VLBA on the VLBA-DiFX software correlator. Disks should be shipped (except Tsukuba and Kashima) to Socorro as soon after the experiment as practical. The Tsukuba and Kashima data should be e-transfered to Haystack as soon after the experiment as is practical. The VLBA needs to process the session at their correlator as soon as possible, because of limited media. They prefer to have the data within one week of the observation, but in no case later than two weeks after the observation. So, we are asking all stations, participating in the RDV sessions, to ship your media to the VLBA the same day the session ends or the next business day (just like the R1/R4 media is shipped). If you know that there is going to be a problem sending your media to the VLBA the same day the session ends or the next business day, please let us (ivscc@ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov) know as soon as possible so that we, along with the VLBA, can determine the best course of action. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know.