Weekly Report for Week Ending September 7, 1999



 Project Control Meeting Agenda  HighlightsHanford Observatory     Livingston Observatory     DetectorProject Office    System/Data Analysis   Administrative Past Weekly Reports

The Project Control Meeting Agenda for Monday  September 13, 1999 will be:
 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

  1. Announcements (5 minutes)
  2. Review of Action Items (10 minutes)
  3. Comments on Weekly Report (5 minutes)
  4. Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests (10 minutes)
  5. Review of ISSUES AND PROBLEMS by Subsystem/Activity (10 minutes each)
Special Items:

Review of Projected Contingency Needs List.  The list will be reviewed to see if there are any items that can be scrubbed.


Special Announcements:   The LIGO II conceptual documents from the LSC and the LIGO Lab will be submitted today, Sept. 10, to NSF. They will be posted on our web site by Monday.


Weekly Report Highlights

Livingston Road Paved! Access expected soon.


LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (F. Raab)



Bake Oven:


(K. Ryan)

LHO Vacuum Bake Oven A load #55, consisting of three BSC bellows and one HAM bellows rotatable flange, was released earlier this week.

Load #56, consisting of six large and six small COS telescope silver coated parabolic mirrors will begin vacuum baking tomorrow (9/10/99).  This load was delayed two days while annual maintenance was being performed on the vacuum bake oven.

Betsy, Bartie and I were finally able to conference with Dennis (also Linda & Yehuda) and air our concerns regarding the Process Travelers.  Most all of these concerns turned out to be "not applicable" and we discovered that we have been satisfying our responsibilities all along--conversing is a good thing!

A reminder for those folks visiting LHO, if you wish to utilize the "Class B Hardware Cleaning Service" (see LIGO-M990034), it is very important that you identify the materials of the parts you are intending to have cleaned on the cleaning request form.  Non-monolithic/composite parts or parts made from out of the ordinary materials, need to have cleaning instructions included on the form.

Core Optics Support:



(B. Weaver)

This week, Mike Smith and Ken Mailand are here at LHO for their second attempt at bench aligning the APS-PO Telescope. So far, so good.  We began on Wednesday by doing some preliminary alignment of the mounted autocollimators inside the telescope to some flat reference mirrors.  We immediately discovered that the reference mirrors were actually wedged, so we corrected the problem by using optical flats.  We were then able to align the telescope using the silver coated parabolic mirrors with visible light.  This afternoon, we will swap out the silver coated mirrors for the dielectric coated mirrors and readjust the alignment using the IR alignment laser.  Ken and Mike will leave LHO on Friday, and it looks as though we will have the APS Telescope and the ETM Telescope completely aligned by then.

Seismic Systems:



(C. Gray & H. Radkins)

BSC5--The NW bellows has finally passed the leak test.  The trouble may have been fibers of the knife edge left over from the machine process that went undetected.  It is difficult to say for sure because the bellows was changed as well after the second test failure.

Spring Seat Exchange--Staging of equipment continues for the exchange of  the 'wet' flourel seats starting at BSC4.  MIT continues testing the seats for the best process to remove the water and not 'raise' the fluorine. Repeatability measurements of the Sokkia Theodolite are ongoing to determine use in repositioning the Optics Tables with optics mounted--BSC4 & BSC7.

1st Article--HYTEC is dismantling the BSC mockup in the basement and the parts are being shipped to the two observatories.  LHO received a 3500# load this week.

4K HAM--HAM4 support tubes and support table have been installed.

G. Gonzalez is visiting and Hugh is supporting her efforts to correlate ground motion to optics (Mode Cleaner) motion.

Corey is setting up an experiment to mechanically check calibration on a seismometer using a pendulum.

Computing:



(C. Patton)

Did the usual backups, ordered more supplies, added new user accounts, helped with several printer and PC problems and kept the GC accounting paper work up to date.


LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations



Seismic Installation: Work is in progress on the BSC at the south end station. Installed all Scissor Tables, Fine Actuators, Air Bearings, and Cross Beams. All equipment and tools have been cleaned and staged. (Riesen)

Optics: Dave Tanner made his first visit here last week. Worked with him on mods to gluing fixtures, and setup a small press for assembly of SOSs. Began removal and reinstallation of 30A circuit to locate bake oven near the assembly area in the Vacuum Prep Lab. Began an in-earnest search for a decent used milling machine and toolroom lathe for the shop. Began assembly and leak checking of 33 COS viewports. (Jonathan Kern)

We assembled seven small optics suspension towers (S/N 009 through 0015). Tower #009 and #013 have all the parts. Tower #014 is missing the suspension block and the parts attached to the suspension block. All the other towers are missing two safety-stop short screws. These missing parts are described on the label of the Amerostat bag that contains the tower. We started to assemble small optics OSEMs using the new aluminum PAM brackets. Twenty of them have been assembled. They still need a PAM screw.We cleaned the new three magnet-dumbbell gluing fixtures. They will be air-baked today. We also cleaned other in-vacuum mounts (3" pedestals etc). They will be baked in the next load. We are still waiting for dynamic control mounts to be shipped.

We contacted ~10 manufacturers, looking for a Nd:YAG system with as high as possible power in TEM00. As of 9/8/99, seven of them have replied. According to this research, the highest, commercially available power in TEM00, cw, Nd:YAG is 40 W. (Sany Yoshida)

Electrical Installation: Material inventory completed and sent to Pasadena. Started cable pulls for SOS in the LVEA. Set up workstations in the electronics lab with additional hand tools.(Rus Wooley)

Beam tube bake: The BT bake on X-2 is now over 400 hrs at temp.(167C) and we are currently ramping down to 150C in preparation for analysis of the gas loads. We have been plagued by power interruptions, two in the last 5 days, but have recovered well each time. Because of power interruptions, we have not been able to get a low enough pressure in the vertex for a leak check, but the pumps are now running and we hope to have a leak check this week.

Facilities: The access road has been paved (!) but until all the striping and side shaping has been completed, the road is not open to LIGO traffic. This is expected next week. The location and design of the LIGO sign was discussed with our neighbor on hiighway 63. She was agreeable and saw no problem with what is proposed.


WBS 1.2, 1.3    Detector Group



DETECTOR GROUP -- Whitcomb/Shoemaker

(WBS 1.2, 1.3)



Interferometer Sensing and Control -- M Zucker
(WBS 1.2.1.1.6, 1.2.1.1.7)

ISC controls commissioning (P. Fritschel)


Started looking at some of the data taken on the LHO mode cleaner last week; and did some modeling of the locally damped suspension to determine the effects of different damping gains.


ASC Initial Alignment (K.Mason, M. MacInnis)


The Brunson 75-H transit square was calibrated using our laser autocollimator. A procedure is being written such than we can field align it on a bench prior to any large optic alignment. Currently the horizontal axis is perpendicular to the mirror face within five microradians and the horizontal shaft is perpendicular to the telescope within 3 microradians. Myron is preparing the MMT3 and RM optical levers for shipment to Livingston.

IO controls commissioning (N. Mavalvala, P. Fritschel, G. Gonzalez, H. Rong)



Our main activity this week has been to diagonalize the MC1 small optics suspension using an optical lever set up on IOT 7. We reflect the 1.06 um input beam (~50 mW) off MC1 and and measure the beam displacement on a quad sensor on IOT7. We used the optical lever to characterize the output (actuation) matrix for minimal cross-coupling of position/pitch/yaw. We then deduced the input (sensor) matrix by driving the now well-decoupled pos/pitch/yaw degrees of freedom and measuring the response of the local sensors. While this procedure seems to give good results in terms of decoupling the various degrees of freedom, we do not have consistency in terms of sensor sensitivities and coil/magnet strengths: e.g., the weakest actuator for pitch diagonalization is not the weakest for yaw diagonalization. It seems that we are adjusting the matrix elements to compensate for more than just differences in sensor/actuator strengths.

We are now in the process of relocking the mode cleaner to continue evaluating its performance. We have set up a seismometer and data acquisition hardware from the seimic correlation experiment to measure seismic noise and input beam pointing noise in the various length and alignment signals.



Lasers and Optics -- J. Camp
(1.2.1.1.2, 1.2.1.1.3, 1.2.1.1.4,1.2.1.1.5)


Prestabilized Laser -- Peter King

Input/Output Optics -- Dave Reitze, UF


LHO 2k (Guido Mueller) LLO 4k (David Tanner, Sany Yoshida) Mechanical Design (Dan Dickrell)


Core Optics Procurement and Metrology -- GariLynn Billingsley



Measurements on RM04 were completed over the weekend, it was ready for scatter testing on the 7th. We are now 2/7 of the way along in the process of surveying the 4K ITMs. Meanwhile Steve Bell is to start scatter measurements on all 4K ITMs. We will choose pairs/spares when both of these surveys are complete.

At the beginning of the survey our motor controller went out. This controls the alignment of the test optic WRT the interferometer. We have a workaround in place and Liz is ordering a new controller (and going through much grief to do so... thanks Liz!)

Core Optics Coatings -- Helena Armandula



Nothing relevant to report.

Core Optics Support -- Michael Smith



Arm cavity baffle: awaiting bids for support frame assembly ETM tel alignment support structure: contract let for fabrication of horizontal and vertical support structure to mount the alignment telescope in BSC6.
APS telescope: Alignment is in process. It was discovered that the reference alignment mirrors for aligning the autocollimator and the secondary mirror mount are wedged, causing the reference beam to be misaligned. This may have been the cause of the alignment difficulties two weeks ago. The error has been corrected and alignment is proceeding.
ETM telescope: The lenses have been installed, and alignment is in process.



Isolation Group -- M. Fine


No report received.



Detector Systems Engineering -- D. Shoemaker/D Coyne

(WBS 1.2.1.1.9)


Global Diagnostics System (Daniel Sigg, John Zweizig)



I continued to struggle with the new compiler version. The new loader version refuses to work with the framecpp.  I however took advantage of this to further improve documentation of the DMT libraries and to perform more extensive testing of the Software under abnormal conditions.  This lead to the discovery (and repair) of a few bugs that have been lurking under the surface. I also coded a copy-on-write version of the Data vector class to determine whether this can be used to speed up data manipulations.

Most of the week was spent debugging the swept sine test.  The transition from one frequency sweep point to the next one is now as smooth as possible. The (huge) time delays have been removed from the decimation filter. A time delay filter has been added to the algorithm library. The analysis now includes a coherence estimate. Additional parameters have been added to the time series object to describe the preprocessing more accurately. The capability to have multiple 'A' channels was added to the swept sine test.

Physics Environmental Monitor (Matt Smith, David Shoemaker)



Matt working on Fluorel baking.
 



Control and Data System -- R. Bork
(WBS 1.2.2)


No report received.


WBS 1.4    Project Office



Visitor's Program, Conferences (Meshkov)

From: Syd Meshkov <syd@ligo.caltech.edu>

Reports, Proposals (Lindquist)

The Preliminary LIGO II Proposal will be submitted to the NSF on September 10.

The Quarterly Report will be submitted to the NSF at the end of September.  Please submit contributions by Friday, September 17, 1999.  Early submittals will be appreciated.  A copy of the previous Quarterly Report is available at Quarterly Report.

We will submit an Operations Work Plan for FY 2000 in October.  I have asked task managers to submit budgets to Florence Kaufman by the end of this month and text by the middle of October.  Again, early contributions will be appreciated.

Change Control/Contingency (Lindquist)

The Potential Contingency Needs List has been revised to reflect information provided during the Project Controls meeting on August 30, 1999.  I have added a staging building for Livingston as well as staffing needs for completion of the Detector.  During the next Project Controls Meeting scheduled for September 13, 1999 we will review this list to see if some items can be scrubbed.  Please provide any changes that need to be incorporated prior to that meeting.

I have scheduled a Change Control Board for 9am PDT Tuesday, September 14, 1999 in the Science Conference Room (SCR).

The following change requests have been submitted:
 

CR-990001 WBS 1.3 Return Unused Budget for Construction Related R&D to Contingency P. Lindquist
CR-990005 WBS 1.1.4 Livingston Site Fiber Optics Cable Installation F. Asiri
CR-990017 WBS 1.4.1 Administrative Account Closeout P. Lindquist
CR-990018 WBS 1.1.5 Beam Tube Bake - EAC W. Althouse
Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection


LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Jasnow)

The site telecon scheduled for Thursday, September 9, 1999 was cancelled.  The next site telecon is scheduled for Thursday, August 16, 1999.  The list of current actions assigned may be found at ACTION LIST.

Everyone is reminded to provide a redlined copy of their current LIGO business card to Ed Jasnow so that we may plug it into the print shop for new ones.  Images of the new LIGO Business cards will be found at Business Cards.
 


PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (Chargois)

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>

No report this week.


DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER (Turner)

From: the DCC <dcc@ligo.caltech.edu>

(No report this week)

New web pages for the DCC gives simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database.Take a look. . .

Press here to access the DOCUMENT CONTROL CENTER WEB PAGE.


COST SCHEDULE CONTROL SYSTEMS (Duncan, Moore, Akutagawa, Kaufman)

From: Sarita Moore<moore_s@ligo.caltech.edu>

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

From: Kris Duncan <kris@ligo.caltech.edu>

From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu> [We have established a LIGO ORACLE Problem Report (LOPR) for documenting, reporting, and tracking progress on problems that we are having with ORACLE.  If you have a need to report a problem, please see Florence, Cindy, or Phil.  So far we have submitted seven reports to David Werntz, who is in charge of the team that is trying to make ORACLE work, and the reports have generated a lot of commotion. --pel]

From: Cindy Akutagawa <cindy@ligo.caltech.edu>

I have spent most of my time on WEBSTER downloading the lowest detail reports (for the end of  July) on the Construction accounts.  Since this is the first time since the conversion from IFIS it is VERY important that everyone takes the time to really look these figures over.  Only the Task Managers can tell if these expenditures/encumbrances are against the correct account and we need to get all corrections started as quickly as possible as it may take a LONG time to get the errors corrected.  [Cindy will be preparing a report for distribution and review as soon as the process of downloading all of the data can be completed.  This is proving to be a very arduous process.  We will need people's cooperation reviewing the data. --pel]


SUBCONTRACTS MANAGEMENT (Petrac, Jasnow)

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)

From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@acrux.ligo.caltech.edu>

No report this week.
TECHNICAL CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT (Althouse)

From: wea@acrux (William Althouse)

No report. See Bake out.


1.4.2.1 Quality Assurance (Tyler)

From: robert vincent <robert.w.vincent@jpl.nasa.gov>

No report this week.


1.4.2.2 Safety (Zydowicz)

From: Mike Zydowicz <zydowicz_m@ligo.caltech.edu>

No report this week.


WBS 1.4.3    Systems Engineering / Data Analysis and Computing


Systems Engineering

MIT is continuing its investigation of fluorel outgassing in the SEI seats. (at Caltech see mike/flourel_09sep99.pdf).
 

LIGO Simulation and E2E Modeling

Biplab Bhawal Ed Maros Hiro Yamamoto

LIGO Data Analysis

[Masha Barnes] [Kent Blackburn] [Phil Ehrens] [Xiao Hu] [Mary Lei] [Edward Maros] [Bruce Sears] [Nathan Yospe]

LDAS hardware

SBA: Performed initial installation of the 80x4GB disk subsystem salvaged from CACR as proof of concept: 2 drives on an Ultra30 and 1 drive on an Ultra 2. Attended non-disclosure meeting with Network Appliance on their upcoming hardware RAID disk solutions.
 

General Computing

MIT:
Recovered a mail server crash over the holiday weekend. Rana A. worked the issue locally and Larry W. worked it remotely. Between the two they were able to get the unit back on-line after a couple of hours.  Sean S. is to check things out and get the machines up to the latest patch levels.

Livingston:
Nothing to report.

Hanford:
Did the usual backups, ordered more supplies, added new user accounts, helped with several printer and PC problems and kept the GC accounting paper work up to date.

CIT:
(Barbara K.) The DCC has begun using the new electronic document directories. They are 'sirius/users/docspublic'  for documents beginning with D, E, G, P, and T and 'sirius/users/docsinternal' for documents beginning with C, L, M, and Q. (Eventually selected documents beginning with M will be added to docspublic; examples of these are Safety Procedures and LSC MOUs, Attachments, and Progress Reports.)

Here is a sample link to a public (whole wide world) electronic document:

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/P/P990019-00.pdf

Here is a sample link to an internal (LIGO-only) document:

http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/docs/internal/L/L990218-00.pdf

The Time Target scheduler is working now to back up the DCC databases to sirius every day.  Three previous versions of the Log and Docs databases are kept.  In doing this, I have figured out one of the great mysteries of pc's at LIGO -- how to reawaken mappings to sirius without rebooting.

Copied the public search tool interface to the internal search tool and pointed the links to the new document directories.  Also implemented the Y2K sort fields.  The Y2K sorts still have to be added to the public search tool and I still have to check with Sam about the Y2K MS Office patches and SP5 on the servers.  Added a help page for document numbers to both the public and internal search tools.

Made more changes to the Celebration database and miscellaneous changes to the LSC web site.

(Samantha) Working on finishing install y2k patches on computers, seemed to have solved the issue with the patches crashing the computers. Documentation, Documentation, Documentation, Documentation, and more Documentation. Fixed minor issue here and there with computers. Installed a new computer for Garilynn. Working on learning Perl.

(Suresh) Worked with Larry on the new server and will be working various issues on the unit (replacement for sirius) until we put it online. This has been converted to root master NIS+ server. The new ATM switch (1000 ASX) has been disconnected from rest of the LIGO network and running as independent switch. The new server is directly connected to the switch by a pair of fiber. Also a 3810 ATM ethernet fan out box is connected to the switch. For testing purpose one workstation is connected to 3810 port. The whole setup is a distinct LIGO network of future. We have several issues to deal with such as installation and licenses renewal of some application software, revamping whole automount tables, implementation of NIS+ domain etc. It will take a while before we migrate to this network.

Resolved a number of network and account issues. Still dealing with the new Oracle setup but the number of issues being brought to us has diminished from the previous weeks.  Working a number of procurement and maintenance issues. A few of the vendors are having problems getting the information we need.

Resolved a few issues on the computers at the 40M.

Working on the procurement of equipment for the LDAS installation at Livingston.

Working a modem issue for Gary Sanders.


WBS 1.4.4.1    Administrative Group


Rita Torres

Not with us at this time.

Dorothy Lloyd

Also not with us at this time.

Irene Baldon

Worked on preparing the paper work for 22 new trips taken recently or upcoming (22 Purchase Requisitions and 20 Advance Requests). There are approximately an additional 5 new trips in various stages pending completion of travel arrangements before the paper work can be completed.

Completed 9 Expense Reports, some of which were extensive, involving 2 or more pages each. Many of these reports were still not taped or completed by the Traveler, and required additional time for completion. I would like to request that staples not be used when attaching receipts to 8-1/2 x 11 white paper. Also worked on a number of problem issues which required a good portion of my time. There are 10 Expense Reports still to be done, including 2 that require extensive work to complete. I'm holding 5 completed Expense Reports which require a check from the Traveler before sending to Travel Audit to clear.

I continue to push for both Advance and Expense Checks already submitted. "The System" is extremely slow in processing these. Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement. Travel has yet to be worked out in regards to ORACLE and things are still in a state of extreme confusion. Things change many times from hour-to-hour. It is very difficult to get things through or out of "The System."

Was asked to start travel preparations for the upcoming LIGO Celebration to held at Livingston, LA, on Nov. 11th and 12th. Vee and I are arranging for Conference Rates with a number of airlines. We are also arranging for a block of 125 rooms at a number of hotels in Baton Rouge, LA. When all is in place, travelers will be able to call (she will be getting an "800" number) or e-mail Vee to book their trip using the special rates that we will be obtaining. I will pass on more information as I obtain it.

Prepared the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for the Week of August 30, 1999.

Performed miscellaneous duties as requested by various members of the LIGO Project here at Caltech, as well as from members of the staffs of each of the two (2) sites. I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and assist them wherever possible.

Elizabeth K. Wood

Dealt with some HR and personnel-related issues.

Jousted with payroll. I'm getting to know Cassandra really well. We had a lovely chat about the new procedures and associated forms. The people in payroll had nothing to do with the design of the new form. We can extend this to say that the people who actually will be working with the new forms had nothing to do with the design. I plan a series of convocations and panel discussions to explore the use and pitfalls of the new bi-weekly leave and effort report. Well, okay, maybe just an email.

Talked with payroll about various and sundry items on the last payroll that caused concern with some LIGOites. I was told that the problems with accrued vacation and sick leave and certain withholdings should be solved on the next paycheck.

Worked with Ed Jasnow and our friends over in Graphic Arts to design and produce the invitations for the LIGOfest in November.

Spent most of the week working on the invitation list for the LIGOfest.

Participated in a telecon with the Bierman-Miller event planners and Mark Coles to discuss the plans for the LIGOfest. Checked with invitation list with Mark in yet another lengthy telecon. I will also be spending some time with Barbara to discuss the websites associated with the scientific symposium on Thursday and the Friday inauguration day.


For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu