Tech Staff Summary 2/8/01

Current Priorities in addition to routine tasks

LDEO
Chris and Jim had a good visit with Armbruster. Eleven of the eighteen stations are operational. The sites are now CERI sites and the equipment belongs to Lamont. Unless Lamont asks for it, we may keep equipment on hand to repair operational stations and to have a hot swap/training lashup, but as we upgrade we send the hardware back to New York.

DBB
Library option is dead for fiscal reasons. Plan B is to raise the tower at SFTN to 150 or 160 feet. SFTN will have links to Richardson, Marked Tree, and KOSE in Luxora.
Still need permissions on Edith, Mitch will rattle chains in Nashville like that will do any good.
No word yet from Falcon but won't be a problem.
Brewer is working on the mockup which hopefully goes faster than fence building.
The priority is to get the link to Marked Tree going.

Routine Maintenance
Tons of stuff to do that can't slide anymore. Jim knows what it is. Mitch will get waveform printouts of the node stations.

Board Shop
Stays where it is. Need to patch holes in ceiling, add ventilation, yank or fix non-functional shower, and install eye wash station.
This is a high priority. We don't want to drag our feet but neither do we want to "burn" good field weather.
Greg nearly has the new tanks complete.

GPS
Eastern hard rock site has been identified and Mac has sent paperwork to owners to get agreement started.
Maintenance run was a disaster. Mitch will work with Bob to get a routine ops plan going that allows tech staff better input on maintenance and hardens download procedures

ET
Mitch has installed new mondo disk on gollum and will move it to rnbworm to provide space needed to add MTTN stations and future DBB.
John is waiting on callback from cable company for Cumberland Gap.
Agreed to the extortion money from PKNC owner.
Mitch worked with LRNC sysadmin and is now back on the net.
John will call Steve to coordinate Athens alternatives. Need line of site with Star Mountain and some kind of continuous connection. Steve found out that Athens does have a nailed up ISDN with an ISP and is looking into options to at least get picks out to the world. Will require a normal node in Athens and removing the two BSD boxes.
Getting reimbursed for the stolen truck and equipment is likely a wash. Mitch will check into getting vehicles insured either through an off campus rider or through private insurance.

ISIS II
Will keep pluggin away as time permits.
Mitch still needs to complete the code to handle the gain channel. Subroutines are done and offline PII style is available. On the fly will need less robust than offline to avoid potentially large and time intensive buffering. (shall we start a pool on whether this ever gets done?)

RAMP
Hell of a way to run a shake down. India away team is away. Tech team put forth outstanding effort to make this happen.
Waiting on Schweig to clear out the rest of his junk.
Need to schedule training day with Bodin.

Pinnacle
Pinnacle Towers now owns the NBC Bank roof rights and are actively buying up towers nationwide. Mitch is working with them to see if we can come up with an agreement both parties can sign.

Gary's Gizmos
On hold until we get USGS input. Greg will visit Pink Palace for their advice so that we can have a starting point when the GS people get here.

I-40 Bridge
Ongoing.

Second tier priorities

ANSS Mitch is actively working on contacts for 10 new sites. At some point tech staff will get more involved. Need to be permitted by May 4 and operational by September 30. After that, strap in boys cause all hell will break loose.

War Room
Jim installed the map mosaic and it is way cool.
Mitch will produce a station map for the ANSS-MA region
Chris will install the white board
Greg acquired raised relief maps and will replace the nasty old map.

PII
RAMPS shakedown forced initial assessment and it ain't looking good. Will continue to reorganize as time permits.

EBZ/PWLA telemetry. Another repeater?

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

MKTA node

NMAD node

IRIG SOH.
Need to record the SOH channel from the gps clocks to know when sync is lost (they will continue to produce IRIGE based on internal clock).
Greg has added channel to monitor gps clock. Need an ew module that monitors and complains.

Backburner priorities.

Station book. Steve installed earthworm v5. Word is, the schema changed again but this shouldn't prevent us from populating with meta data.

Status channels. Currently supplied on last 8 channels. Need a module to process.

LNXT node These stations are on indefinite hold until we see how the fit with pending ANSS plans.
permit/install L7 and L8

MKTA node These stations are on indefinite hold until we see how the fit with pending ANSS plans.
permit/install remaining 3 ISIS.

NMAD node