Tech Staff Summary, 3/16/2000

New Mechanism. The calendar in the kitchen now has a major project listed for each week for the remainder of 2000. The farther from the present, the larger the error bar. This does not imply that only that project should be worked on that week, but rather that is the focus (lower priorities get worked in). An accompanying white board for the future 3904 conference room will contain the completion dates. Mitch probably won't get the white board done in time for his Performance review; perhaps it'll be milestone on the one next year.

Current Priorities in addition to routine tasks

GPS
Piggot and East Prairie are done.
6 stations left; need to get them done by June.
The prison site north of Pickwick won't work. Chris will scout
farther north for potential sites. Ripley will be nearly impossible without sacrificing perfect sky-view
$1600 of Seismic Networks supplies were used for GPS. Jim will begin charging seinets expenses to GPS until this is recouped. Since GPS avoided lodging and put considerable mileage on the Suburban, this figure includes 1 month rent at the house and a set of tires.
Weeks of 20 and 27 March are scheduled for GPS siting.
Weeks of 1, 8, and 15 May are tentatively scheduled for installation.

Digital Backbone
Water District agreement is still somewhere between Nashville and Memphis. Project is in danger of bureaucratic delay. We can't purchase or schedule anything until we get permission.
Two complete systems are in hand.
Mitch has reviewed the technical manuals and the configuration is very similar to the pipeline-50's. Steve will attempt to configure and test using the supplied mini-wip antennas.
When Steve completes configuration, we will test Richardson to CERI link, and any other links that need testing.
For connection between Aironet bridges (previously referred to as radios) and computers there a couple choices. Greg is researching shielded Mondo twisted pair for the ideal 10base-2 to 10base-2. Mitch/Steve/Carl will research adapters to allow 10base-5 to thicknet to 10base-2.
Greg is still waiting on spec for routers (needed at Frechman's Bayou) from Steve. After reading the Tech Manuals, Mitch thinks this can be done with a dumb hub.
Greg will provide Mitch with lat/lon pairs.

Marked Tree Broadbands
Done.

ET
DYTN is online.
GMT vandalism is fixed.
New Rock City owners have given permission.
Chris got keys for Star Mt and put a set in the cabinet up top.
Parker needs to check to see if we can use the old building at Flat Gap.
Windrock is back to square 1 due to siting difficulties.
Of the 7 permissions John has, two are ready to install but go through a repeater that is awaiting confirmation. We don't want to install these until we're sure.
Many of the permission are through TN State Forest service which is slower than the UofM lawyers.
Athens EMA is moving. Check with Steve when. Will it have internet? Should we replace the freewaves with aironets?
Jim will head to ET next week to fix Rock City. He'll also snoop around TN Tech near crossville to see if it could work for a CMG3. He'll also replace the BHT receiver.
Greg will verify telemetry paths for the stations John is looking at.
Mitch and Greg visited Morristown and this will work well as a node. Scheduled installation is July.
Mitch and Greg visited Sewanee and this will work well for a CMT3. Scheduled installation is first part of May.
Still waiting on permit to move RICH.
Various solutions for the leaky vaults were proposed all of which should mitigate it. Doesn't seem to be pathological so we'll apply the fix as needed.
Jim will make sure sufficient hardware is ready.
John has decided on Robert Bryant as his assistant. Mitch will reactivate his application when confirmation is received.
Mitch and Greg visited JIEE at Knoxville. Mitch has arranged hardware from the NEIC for two worms (TVA and UT). Upon installation, two-way near-real-time exchange will be established. Installation is scheduled for September. Buland wants TKL out of the deal; this is a CTBT Beta station run by AFTAC and is going to be tricky. Mitch is looking into it.

Board Shop
Greg is scheduling a Demo of the high speed router. He'll get with Mitch when it is firm to invite other depts (e.g. electrical engineering).

MPH time marks are fixed.

WADM drum is flat.

Greg is registered for the Hazmat course on 3/22. In a rather verbose fashion, he threatened to become anal about it.

NC truck Chris will get an estimate on truck/winch/shell.

Chris will register for the AC course.

All full-time staff are strongly encouraged to attend the REIS Forum on 4/17.

Second tier priorities:

CERI power systems Need to examine generator loads/backup power for general CERI systems especially core computers (ugh, hope this doesn't mess up the seisnets).

Autozone
Two NI 16-bit PCI cards are here and work.
Greg will refurbish one of the old GPS clocks that supplies the wrong time code. While this time code won't work with the DAQ system, we will record it on one channel in the event absolute time is needed. Data will be stamped with the pc time since, under normal circumstances, only relative time is important.
Jim will service the free-field sensor. Then, after the DAQ is up and we get some data, he will service the other sensors as required.
Need to order the PC and mux.
Installation is scheduled for late July.

Other Broadbands
Where the hell is the borehole sensor?
Greg will contact DTA to get DM-16 returned whether or not the "loop" problem has been fixed. We haven't seen it in the field.

Aftershock Array Paul has a schedule, can we meet it?
Field test is scheduled for week of May 29.

ISIS upgrade As time permits, stations will be upgraded to the new 4-channel system with emphasis on the backbone stations (this'll make Harley happy to get clipped data).

As time permits priorities.

Panda/PandaII No deployments are firm. Proposals have been submitted which could result in deployments no sooner than 10/2000. PII on south campus should be inventoried. Then, the 15 PII packages at CERI should be fixed.

SFTN general upgrade This would be very nice, but makes Mitch nervous. It requires pulling the sensor. Jim will get the horizontal channels on the air for recording at CERI.

Analog backbone reconfigure is waiting on the lawyers.

EBZ/PWLA telemetry. Another repeater?

LNXT node Secure propane tank.
Secure racks.
replace coax jumpers
replace rg-58 unshielded jumpers

MKTA node

NMAD node

Station book. Jim has good records for each station but it would be nice to have an IRIS style station book.

Backburner priorities

Status channels. Currently supplied on last 8 channels.

LNXT node permit/install L7 and L8

MKTA node permit/install remaining 3 ISIS

NMAD node