Weekly Report for Week Ending October 4, 2001

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  October 8, 2001 will be:

 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

1. Announcements
2. LSC Issues (Weiss)
3. Comments on Weekly Report
4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)
• Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
• Administration (Lindquist)
• Sites (Raab, Coles, Shoemaker, Sanders)
• Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
• Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
• Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

Weekly Report Highlights

LLO 4K achieves full recycled lock for 10 second stretches!

...and more....

...and at LHO, the 4K arm...

LSC Issues (Weiss)

No report

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

No report.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

General Items:
--------------
(F. Raab)
 

It appears 2K laser and digital suspensions are behaving better. Operators are attempting more challenging projects in support of commissioning. Most of these items are reported elsewhere. A new addition to operations staff is Cherl Vorvick, now in her second week at LHO. Cheryl ha her BS in physics from UW and will soon get her masters in EE from WSU.
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

Detector: Prepared for full interferometer locking by setting power levels on all
beam sensing tables for high power. After a few days of measuring the
optical/electronic properties of the separate parts of the IFO we put
these parameters into the lock acquisition program and late on Monday and
Tuesday observed the first flashes of full interferometer locking! The
system would occasionally lock for up to 10 seconds at power levels of
100x more than single arm levels and a few brief moments of build up as
high as 350x.(all)
 

Optics and Installation: Rus and I met with the representative of
Metropolitan Electronics, the vendor installing the Laser Safety Interlock
system as well as the new security cameras.  An installation schedule was
agreed upon wherein the system will be completely installed by Oct 26, and
programming and system shakedown should be completed 2 weeks following that.
Worked with an additional manufacturer to obtain an additional bid for the
installation of an acoustic enclosure surrounding our PSL.  The new
periscope is expected back from the anodizer this afternoon, and will be
installed tomorrow.  (Jonathan Kern)

CDS: After Rolf's visit and changes to DAQ system, I have been updating our CDS
Web-page especially the Redbook showing the new changes. We are also battling our
GPS receiver problems trying to locate the failed part. Made changes to the asc
database to limit the ETM's pitch and yaw bias to -1.0 and +1.0. These changes
were done to protect the super duper controllers from tripping out. Checking on
RDS not seeing the test points to record. (Chethan)

GC: We have ordered two additional Mathematica licenses, and are
checking to see which of our current licenses need to be
upgraded. (TOM)

LDAS: Attempted to flash the replaced hard drive in the Sun T3 with the
current firmware.  This failed and I am working with Sun on a solution.
The tape library that was sent in to cybernetics has come back and will
be tested to make sure it is functional.  Added the /etc/ldasname file
to all of the LDAS machines at LLO.  Big Brother is now up and running
at Hanford, Livingston, and ldas-sw. (Shannon)

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

See also the daily electronic logs for the installation and commissioning activities:
Hanford Detector Log
Livingston Detector Log

1.1 LHO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

2km Commissioning

Betsy and Ski measured a whole raft of noise spectra for the suspension coil drivers in various configurations.  The nois elevel for an inactive coil driver (no damping, no ASC or LSC inputs enabled was a bit more than 10 nV/rtHz at the coil monitor point.  The ASC inputs have a large n x 16 Hz comb, an artifact of the ASC Pentek.  The ASC input filter would help this a lot.

4km Commissioning

Mike and his vrew are commissioning the WFS for the modecleaner with the now usual result that the input and Output matrices look totally screwy, but work to align it.  They will try it again, but having done a pretty careful job, they are bound to get the same basic answer.

Cabling up the various ISC tables. WFS picomotors cabled and tested.

1.2LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

4 km Commissioning

Higher current test mass controllers were used in the end test masses during the full interferometer locking. The same controllers were first used on the input and end test masses of the y arm cavity. The single cavity lock is significantly more robust than before and the lock acquisition occurs typically within a second. We have not yet established the statistics for lock loss during typical daytime operation. It is clearly going to be better. We are going forward with converting two more controllers to high current operation and hope to finish their installation next week.

Misc.

I installed the alarm manager and alarm handler in LLO and made LLO the configuration files. We are working with the subsystem experts to refine and improve the guidance information.

I installed the new Flash memory disk in the Q4128 datalogger in LLO, it works very well. We are testing the coil magnetometer performance with Shourov.

I was finishing up the Amaldi and Snowmass conference proceedings.

I produced the PCB design for microcontroller/driver controlling the shape memory actuators used on the STS-2 sensor of the active seismic isolation system. I am in the process to build a prototype.

2.0 OtherEngineering and Scientific Activities

2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

Modeling

IOO PERISCOPE

PSL

NPRO S/N #170 was shipped off to LHO in case a decision is made to replace the master oscillator out of the 10-W laser.

Lee Cardenas

• Complete Mounting of the New diode pumped infrared Crystal Laser on a 2'x 2' breadboard for Mohana. Switched the laser on and applied 2.0 Amps of current and got 1.170 watts of power.  Mohana and I took measurements current vs voltage and current vs power.  Measurements still in progress.
• New NPRO S/N 259 mounted and aligned on the optical table as NPRO S/N 170 left to LHO.
• I have received a new NPRO S/N 425  Model# 126-1064-100 (100mw) along with P/S. from Lightwave.
• I have received from REO  (18 pcs)new coated mirrors for the new generation of PMC
• I have received (8pcs) of polished substrate rejected prior to coating for scratches, digs & chips.
• (2pcs) of mirrors rejected after coating (point defects)

Sander Liu
In the process of writing the Acceptance Test Procedure for the FSS Servo Board.

LSC

Rich Abbot, Mohana Mageswaran, Flavio Nocera

• Flavio, Mohana, Todd and Rich are reviewing existing procedures and bringing them up to speed in accordance with the new requirements for testing.  We have about 20 procedures that we will use for each of the different boards we currently produce.
• We will be shipping three 24.495 MHz photo-detectors to MIT for final calibration.  As we do not currently have a test laser that we are permitted to use, we will test them using the integral test input and ship them that way.
• Flavio has finished the testing of the clock driver boards and has sent one to LLO and one to Rolf for testing.  If there are no issues reported by the end of next week (Oct. 13), we will place an order for about 120 boards and use an outside stuffing house to stuff them.  We currently have up to serial number 107 out and about.
• Mohana has been running her test laser in the basement of Lauritson.  The laser is now running on the new controls and is slated for use in the photon recoil calibration system.
• All documents are up to date in the DCC for the LSC, timing system and the Mode-cleaner servo, with the exception of certain DCN's that still need submission.

Data Acquisition

Worked with Wooley at LLO on diagnosing DAQ reset problems encountered over last weekend; Problem was traced to faulty single-mode to multi-mode fiber optic converter in the X end station link

General CDS

Have teleconference today with VMIC regarding their new VME processor boards (Dual 1.2 GHz Pentium) and new reflected memory boards (2Gbit/sec).  We also want to discuss possibility of faster VME I/O design ie improve performance of single VME read/writes.

New ADC/DAC modules

Digital Suspension

LLO Seismic Feed Forward

Rolf Bork
Continued on code to allow changing filter coeffs on the fly and added excitation point capabilities; should be complete in next day or two.

Diagnostics

Data Monitoring Tool

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• PSL (Abbott, Ugolini, Vass, Smith, King):
• Our PSL MOPA (Lightwave laser) power output has fallen from 10.7 watts when it first arrived (4 months ago) to 9.6 watts (now). It's been operating for about 1700 hrs. We are contemplating a re-optimization of the optics in the box, along the lines of what was done with the H4K laser.
• Dennis Ugolini continues to take BeamScan measurements to check the existing mode matching in the PSL Reference Cavity and main beam optical train. This week he focused on the beam exiting the MOPA laser; the exiting beam parameters are somewhat different than what Peter measured during installation, some months ago. Don't know why; but it goes far in explaining the discrepancies between measurements and the model, for both beam paths.
• Dennis will re-assemble the beam paths with the currently installed lenses, and take a series of baseline measurements of transfer functions, visibility, noise, etc., optimizing all servo loop gains and phases, and power throughput.
• Mike Smith has a full mode-matching solution for the two PSL beam paths. With Dennis' new measurements of the MOPA exit beam, this must all be revised. We'll implement this solution, and take yet another series of measurements, soon.
• At that time, we'll also add real beam dumps everywhere they're needed.
• We are contemplating making a small change to the layout at that time: instead of using both the high-power and low-power beams from the MOPA, we'd eliminate the low-power beam from the laser, and use an external pickoff (with only one periscope and set of circularizing lenses) for both beam paths. To our knowledge, that's what's done at all 3 site lasers. Mike is working out the consequences of this change.
• Mike pointed us to LIGO-T970145-00 from H. Rong and P. Fritschel which outlines how to correctly set up the VCO/AOM optical layout and how to minimize beam wiggle due to that device. We will re-optimize this when we make the above changes.
• Ben says the Caltech electricians have finished all the rewiring of the PSL enclosure. Ben is obtaining a needed "make-before-break" switch. However, 6 of the magnetic switches that sense the door positions appear to be broken (again), and we'll need to get this fixed...
• The MOPA cooling leak has been fixed (with 8 turns of teflon tape); there's no evidence of damage to the optics inside the MOPA box. However, the water is heavily chlorinated. Steve has diluted the water in the chiller.
• Ben will ask PR for an updated PSL rack diagram.
• Facilities (Vass, Jones, Smith, AJW):
• Larry reports that Santa Fe Textiles will finally deliver a prototype of 24-conductor twisted-pair in-vacuum cables tomorrow (Friday). He also checked with Cooner wire about breaks in the conductors, and they say there might only be a handful of breaks in 1000 ft of 24-conductor cable. He also continues to work with MDC on their teflon-coated cable (they would assemble full 12-pair, braided-shielding cable, with connectors at both ends, and the only question is how flexible such cables would be). After testing the Santa Fe Textiles prototypes on our small mode cleaner stack to test for sufficient flexibility, we hope to make a decision and order all the cables ASAP.
• There are orders outstanding for the 5'x12' optical table from TMC, custom support legs from CES, and optical port flanges from CES.
• Dennis Ugolini has a simple method for predicting when the N2 supply for the vacuum valves runs out of gas (typically, every 10 days), and this will be monitored regularly.
• Steve has marked up all the optical table locations and is arranging for holes to be drilled so that the table legs can be bolted to the floor.
• Steve has ordered various optical equipment to help us monitor the PSL and the lab: another beam viewer, a Sony TRV98 night-shot camcorder, an Olympus C700 digital camera, and an InFocus LP350 projector.
• Optical layout and scattered Light control (Smith): Mike is designing the periscope that brings the PSL light into the IFO. A concept for this IO periscope was designed with the following functions: periscope to raise the PSL beam height to the IFO beam height; the upper mirror in the periscope will be a fast steering mirror; there is a beam splitter and steering mirror to direct a sample of the beam to the Input Monitor optical system; an electronically actuated mechanical shutter with a beam dump for blocking the beam into the IFO.

Also, work is in process to generate the Design Requirements and Conceptual Design document for the Design Requirements review on 10/18. This will includes requirements and conceptual design for the input beam from the PSL mode matching to the input mode cleaner, mode matching to the main IFO, 11 IFO output sensing beams, baffling and scattered light control, optical levers and telescopes, and an initial alignment procedure.
• Suspension controllers (Ben Abbott, Heefner): Ben is almost done with the ProTel drawings for the 10 digital suspensions.
• Computing (Bogue, Ugolini, Bork): Ben has been handling the replacement of the failed IBM disks in our RAID array.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

No report

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Bayer, Fritschel, Harry, MacInnis, Mason, Miller, Mittleman,
Ottaway, Phinney, Rollins, Shoemaker, Zucker)
=======================================================================

Infrastructure:

The seismic support piers have been grouted and the
contractor has cleaned up and cleared off. The grout is expected to
attain sufficient strength by 10/10 to undertake the planned test
of free pier eigenfrequencies, requested by the hydraulic actuator
design team.

Due to the high bids received on the mezzanine structure for SEI/SUS
staging, we've decided to descope the weight capacity and do the design
in-house. The resulting delay will be accommodated by temporarily relocating
other equipment so we can use occupied floorspace for pending
assembly work; the mezzanine will still easily be in place well before
it is needed for adLIGO seismic installation (there's sufficient float
in the schedule).

We palletized and shipped a load of BSC SEI assembly equipment loaned
by LLO back to Livingston, to arrive Monday or so.  This frees up
some floor space in our high bay.

Hydraulic actuators:

Ken held a review of the mechanical design for
the hydraulic actuator supports and articulations.  The design was
received well.  Two issues raised were the capacity for coarse
adjustment (relatively easy to handle) and a subtle problem of torsion
due to spring unwinding (as of this morning Ken had a novel idea
which should fix this).

Joshua has begun assembling the hydraulic pump/accumulator/regulator
test skid in the machine shop.  After much deliberation we elected to
go with stainless Swagelock piping for the prototype for ease of
assembly.  We may later transition to VCR or brazed connections for
production.

CDS/DAQ/GDS:

Our GDS RAID disk tower was shipped back to the manufacturer.  Also two
failed drives from our other (CDS) RAID were returned to their
respective manufacturers. We set up two more Sun Blade 100 operator
consoles on the CDS network to support PSL commissioning and an
additional control room node.

PSL:

The PMC servo electronics were repaired and the PMC is again working.
The 10W MOPA arrived in good order from Caltech.  We expect our enhanced
safety enclosure will be in house shortly, at which time we'll
place the PSL table into final position and cut over
from the test NPRO to the MOPA.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling (Bhawal)
 

Weekly Simulation Physics Meeting
------------------
Luca talked about his preliminary work on characterization of actuators and
sensors. Virginio gave an update of mechanical simulation and validation of
MSE code and Mark Barton showed us the Mathematica model for the advanced
suspension system and various modes. Biplab reported about mode mismatch
simulation and finally Erika gave a presentation of her study of flat-top
beam using FFT code.

Mode mismatch
-------------
(Biplab) Han2k and equivalent high finesse 2-mir cavity are properly locked
and beams at various ports are looked at. TEM00 carrier power inside
IFO/cavity is lower than the analytical expectation for higher values of
longitudinal shift in beam position. However, TEM20 & 02 power and sideband
power (in all modes) in recycling cavity matches well with analytical result.

Alfi
----
(Bruce)
- Working on port and connection widgets for the Alfi5 display.

(Melody)
- Continued working on displaying member nodes in alfi5.
 

LIGO Data Analysis System
 

Software Systems (Blackburn)

  Began implementing the one sided power spectrum estimator
  within the dataConditionAPI to supplement the existing two
  sided PSD.

  Began developing a translator library to prepare data products
  generated in the dataCondtionAPI for casting into process
  frames in the frameAPI.

  Tested the new functionality in the dataConditionAPI to pass
  through arbitrary SQL results from the LDAS database for use
  in search codes running under the wrapperAPI. Initial tests
  indicated an issue which is being fixed.

  Updated some of cmonClient's documentation: status pages.
  Minor fixes to cmonClient.

  Working on metadataAPI issues: fixed problem with dbUniqueIds
  not writing out correct foreign key uniqueId cols.
  Had to bypass sngl_transdata and coinc_sngl since these
  are special cases. Created tk script dbDsnames to
  prompt user for database user name and passwords to
  create a customized LDASdsnames.ini in /ldas_outgoing.

  Fixed metadata tests to run on ldas-dev due to
  use of new var LDAS_SYSTEM for domainname: getMetaData and
  insertion test; also ran datasock test on dataserver,
  sunbox1, controlmon and linuxbox1 to completion for
  testing ilwd binary transfers.

  Fixed database utilities db2utils, dbDsnames,
  and dbUniqueIds to use new var for domainname.

  Installed custom LDASdsnames.ini and dbUniqueId files at
  sites after ldas mirroed software was copied to each site..
 

  Created a new scratch test database, ldas_tst, at the sites.

  Extended dataConditonAPI to handle arbitrary sql
  derived inputs and format them for use by the
  wrapper API.

  Added support to frame API for all simulated data
  types and attributes.

  Refactored the base 64 tcl code to meet the
  requirements of rfc #2045 fixing a bug reported
  during the standalone workstation installation
  of LDAS.

  Tested newly installed *current* development version
  of LDAS at Hanford, Livingston, and MIT.

  Fix for 'finalizing' message introduced a bug when
  'CREATE_DUMMY_MDD' and 'CREATE_DUMMY_STATE' debug flags are
  enabled. Fixed the problem.

  Working on resource file for the wrapperAPI. This file
  includes all ex-configure flags used for debugging. Changing
  the code to use these resource file flags instead of
  preprocessor macros.

  Tried to build LAL with new libtool and automake. This fails,
  but Milwaukee is working on the necessary changes.

  Worked on improving LDAS build process. Modified config and make code to
  work with new versions of libtool and automake and eliminate the need to
  set LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

  Worked with Sergei Klimenko (briefly) to fix his LDAS build problems on
  his dual-cpu computer. Uncovered our own documentation bug: required
  binutils version should be 11.2 and not 10. Fixed the document.
 

  Tested LDAS builds exhaustively under the new libtool and automake.

  LDAS is now running on a single LINUX workstation (all APIs) here at
  Caltech. A sample dataPipeline ran to completion including the
  insertion of search code results into the DB2 database on that
  single workstation.
 

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

Caltech
-------
(Dan Kozak)

Did some HPSS stuff (repacking tapes in the 3590 classes, setting up
users on johnny to use HSI).

Obtained 3 quotes for the first order of 500 LIGO archive tapes (STK9940).

Worked on QFS benchmarking in the wake of Sun's visit.

(Al Wilson)

Cleaned up after realizing that Sun sent a replacement T3 drive with
old firmware on it.

Upgraded m71 to Linux-2.4.10 kernel to evaluate stability.

Installed video switch in the 6th floor conference room to allow for
more convenient use of the projector system.

Converted and rebooted the ldas-dev system to use the new /etc/ldasname
identification scheme instead of the old NIS domainname.

Fixed disk drive problem in m27.

(Stuart Anderson)

Investigated IEEE standards for optical Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Channel
and found that 50um multi-mode fiber should be long enough for most
of our needs. This contradicts the conclusion from earlier this year
that we would need to use more expensive 9um single-mode fiber to get
past the limitations of the commonly installed 62.5um multi-mode fiber.

Continuing to work on the configuration for the next LDAS procurement.

Cleaned up the LIGO Data Computing Group software distribution (/ldcg)
to reduce it from 609 to 487 packages.

MIT
---
(Keith Bayer)
 
made ldasname change
read greg's backup script (will install)

Livingston
----------
(Shannon Roddy)

Attempted to flash the replaced hard drive in the Sun T3 with the
current firmware.  This failed and I am working with Sun on a solution.
The tape library that was sent in to cybernetics has come back and will
be tested to make sure it is functional.  Added the /etc/ldasname file
to all of the LDAS machines at LLO.  Big Brother is now up and running
at Hanford, Livingston, and ldas-sw.

Hanford
-------
(Greg Mendell)

Worked on incorporating fssnap into backups on Sun machines on the
ldas network.  The Solaris 8 fssnap command takes a snapshot of a file
system.  The snapshot version of the file system is held read only, and
can be safely backed up, while I/O continues on the original file
system.  However, while fssnap is running, output is suspended, and
files written to during this time will appear incomplete in the
snapshot.  (The good news is that files are not corrupted; i.e., no
dangling ionode pointers occur.)   The time it takes fssnap to run is,
e.g., 5 sec on a 5 GB file system that was 16% used.
 

Data Analysis Activities
 

(Greg Mendell)
1) Worked on knownpulsardemod DSO code.  A few minor bugs were fixed in
the code.  Most of the time has been spent
updating lal, lalwrapper, and ldas to use wrapperInterfaceDatatypes.h,
automake-1.5, and libtool-1.4.2.
 

(Peter Shawhan)
  I have been working on "hardware" signal injection using the GDS
excitation
  channels.  Daniel and I worked out a scheme in which a client program
  streams data to the front end "arbitrary waveform generator" (awg) in
blocks
  using RPC; he made the necessary changes to the awg API functions and to
the
  front-end code, and I created a client-side library which provides a
simple
  interface.  I also made a client program which reads waveform data from a
  file and injects it; I tested this with a NS-NS inspiral chirp, and saw it
  (with dataviewer) appear on the excitation channel I had specified.

  I also got a copy of Matlab for Linux (under the regular Caltech site
  license) and used it to build the MEX-files in LIGOtools (frextract,
  frgetvect, mkframe, readMeta) which had previously only been built for
  Solaris.  I released new Linux versions of the Fr and dataflow packages
  which include these MEX-files.

  (Philip Charlton)
  Began working on the code to analyse template overlap which will
  compare the FCT with conventional template methods for inspiral
  searches.
 

(Lazzarini)
I attended a weekend meeting (29, 30 Sept) at Virgo's Cascina site to discuss GWIC activities on network analysis. GEO was represented by Sathyaprakash. All Italian bar groups were also represented.
The 2-day meeting focused on status of various project-level activities. Benoit and I gave a review of what has been accomplished at LIGO; similar status was provided by Virgo. I had invited Ewa Deelman, from USC/Info Sci Inst, who is working on GriPhyN-LIGO interfaces, to attend, since she was already in Italy for a GridForum and Itlaian GridLab meeting in Rome. She gave an excellent "what is grid computing and how canit be applied toLIGO/Virgo" talk that was well received by Virgo. We agreed to work for a next phase of implementation that would include the gridftp package for exchanging data. GEO has made a commitment to be ready "soon" to be included in the  data exchanges. They will replicate what we are already doing in order to save effort.
 

I also learned that GEO is going to perform an evaluation of LDAS versus their currently planned software implementation to see the relative performance/robustness merits of the two options.
 

A set of minutes will be drafted using extensive notes taken by Sathyaprakash during the meeting.
 

General Computing (Wallace)

MIT:
(Keith)
-Spec'd out laptop for new postdoc
-Built Solaris SB100 for gc
-Started investigating modem equipment
-LASTI work:
 built two Solaris SB100 nodes for CDS network
 built accounts and nfs mounts
 ran wires
-Investigating vnc
-Investigating laptop to projector settings

Livingston:
(Tom)
-Have ordered two additional Mathematica licenses, and are
checking to see which of our current licenses need to be
upgraded.
-Second T1 line is installed and working.

Hanford:
Unable to report this week.

CIT:
(Mick & Wendy)
-Finished up some documentation and started school.

(Barbara)
- Sent a revised version of the costbook detail report for review.  This
version displays all WBS definitions in the hierarchy and has placeholders
for all activity sheets.
- Created query to update cost codes for costbook line items and researched
the exceptions.  Investigated impact of new discipline codes.
- Fixed overnight jobs on pherkab to point to the D drive.
- Added photos to About LIGO web pages.
- Reworked the LDAS maps for UWM.
- Web site changes for meeting attendees, fellowships, seminar, many mou
attachments and reports.
- Wrote some documentation and did some associated housekeeping.

(Lisa)
- Figured out what needed to be done to get SunPCI 2.x installed and running on
solaris 8.  There were persistent core dumps that required a kernal patch and
mouse driver errors that are solved with ver 2.2.2 of the sunpci software.
- Did extensive testing of the backup system.  I am still looking into some
drive incompatibility questions between the drives on our robot and an external
stand alone drive.  I tried to get the remote user feature of solstice backup to
work as well.  The software said it would do its thing but wouldn't restore any
files.  The answer is that restores need to be initiated from the client rather
than from a remote server.
- Helped get the rack mount servers into the rack.
- Building rana as a development web server.
- Worked on some miscellaneous printer problems and user account stuff.

(Mike)
-Installed two rack mounted servers with Larry & Lisa.
-Complete reload and upgrading hardware and all General
Computing software.
-Sub-basement cleaned up by un-installing unnecessary software that was
slowing down the performance of PC to make workable for engineers and students.
-Loaded 2Ghz PC for a new visitor this included all General computing
software and engineering software.
-Upgraded ANSYS license server to 5.7.1 and upgrade the 5.7.1 software on
users workstations.
-Millikan conference room PC, having problems booting after troubleshooting
turns out slaved 6 GIG  hard drive is dead, restored win98 on the primary 10GIG
hard drive from a ghost image with different partitioning scheme to make this
drive dual bootable to win98 and LINUX.
-Onsite user and phone support, that included fixing minor software glitches
and hardware issues.

(Larry)
-Worked a number of procurements. Put through the maintenance contracts on SUN
equipment and Hummingbird s/w. Placed equipment orders for the 40M and LDAS. The
big order for the Foundry system went through and the equipment has already
started showing up.
-Spent a little time fixing/setting up some of the web locations dealing with
the financial side of the house. Also, assisted a number of other people working
on different documentation issues.
-Resolved some disk space problems. We now have users generating large data
files which required more disk purchases, which have been done. To accommodate
the users we have moved a few directories around until we get the new disk
systems put on-line.
-Worked a number of e-mail issues. Mainly, spam complaints. Vendors and the
companies providing the e-mail services have been contacted. Along the same line
there is still work being done to modify the LIGO-CIT e-mail services to allow
more filtering and virus checking.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>

Silicate Bonding
Bonded 2 prisms (ears) of different design on a large fused silica substrate.
After attaching fibers to them, the ears will be loaded to evaluate their performance under stress.

"Q" measurements
Received 4 re-polished thin substrates from Wave Precision.
2 of them went to Gregg Harry (MIT) and the other 2 to Steve Penn (Syracuse) for "Q" measurements.
I expect to receive 2 measured thin substrates shortly. They will be sent to J.M.Mackowski for processing.

From Mark Barton:
 

This week I continued work on my quad suspension model. I got working some old code in my framework for calculating matrices of damping coefficients. (I hadn't exercised it for a while so it had gotten out of date.) I also redid the expressions for the potential energy of the wires to include bending elasticity. The new version is based on the full solution for a bent beam, reduced to a power series in the angles at the end of the wires, assumed small.
 

From Rich Abbott:
 

Began stuffing of prototype voice coil driver. There are still some parts that have not come in, but within a week the circuit will be operational to supply the +/- 10 amp drive required by the coils.
 

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