Jim T, Jim B, Francisco, Jim S, Chuck, Shing, Whit, Tom, Dave, Dick

SUG Minutes – 13 Oct, 2015

In attendance

Station Reports – New Info in RED

Whit – Off the air due to RFI

Wes – The FSX-1 spectrograph is currently undergoing modification to be able to receive switched RCP and LCP. Wes is currently upgrading the LGM radio room with new flooring and furniture and will install a TFD polarimeter array in the next several months.

Tom – Still making great observations with the FSX-4 and a Jove dual-dipole array.

Jim B – A second pair of crosses has been added to the LWA-style array. Active baluns have been shipped to Jim. The FSX-2 and an RTL-SDR are operating. Jim has also started a new, fancy, nice-looking web site for HNRAO.

Dave – Now has an automatic calibrator system—a modification of the FS-200 calibrator system—running step calibrations once a day. All else pretty much the same at AJ4CO.

Francisco Will be operating a narrow band polarimeter with two Jove antennas from home and a wideband FSX/FTD system from Rosemary’s hills.

Chuck – Spectrograph FSX-6 will be installed on MTSU campus in the next few weeks.

A square array antenna will be used initially. A bowtie LWA-style antenna array (one or two crosses) will then be built with a design similar to Jim B’s array.

All observers are urged to keep an engineering log and update their system drawings for the SUG site.

Discussion – New Info in RED

Start of the 2015-16 Season – Jupiter’s elongation will be 60° on 11 Nov 2015.

JUNO Ground-Based Observing Campaign – Dave will prepare – with everyone’s help – a document of SUG system capabilities which may be shared with Philippe Zarka who is coordinating ground based observations during the Juno mission. The draft SUG capabilities document is being prepared.

SUG Science – At present, the following are thought to be achievable with data from participating SUG stations.

1) CML-Io phase plane probability distributions – what does the phase plane look like for different emission types and polarizations?

2) Modulation lane studies – do modulation lanes appear the same for spaced spectrographs?

3) Ionospheric scintillation comparison

4) Jovian DAM flux density calculation

5) Polarimetry – what is the RCP to LCP power ratio for a given Jovian DAM observation?

6) Spaced Spectrograph comparison – may be possible to get an idea of emission source beam shape or cone wall width by comparing spaced spectro records.

7) Fractal analysis – may be interesting to investigate what is actually required to attempt such analyses.

RSS Versions in Use – Tom 2.2.25; Wes 2.1.20; Jim B 2.6.0 & 2.6.1; Dave 2.1.19 & 2.1.20. Jim Sky noted that the new switcher-modified FSX spectros should use RSS verion 2.5.3 or higher and that the most recent version of RSS is 2.6.1.

Techno problems – Dave and Jim are having problems with USB to Serial adapters. Whit brought up several ideas including purging old drivers and installing new drivers every time there is an OS upgrade. Whit sent around a couple of relevant links. Jim B shared with everyone a picture of an adapter available from Best Buy that has been working very well for him between a Win 7 computer and the FSX-2.

Spectrograph Network – GOOD NEWS – The education proposal submitted by Shing, et al. includes money for 5 years for development of clusters of radio spectrographs. This proposal has been approved however the exact details of funding related to the Jove/SUG portion are not yet available. Funds for equipment, which may be as high as $100k, will be managed by Chuck at MTSU.

1) There are 27 teams competing to receive funds from this grant – results expected early 2016 – with funding start possibly by summer 2016 (Chuck has Oct 1, 2016 as a potential start date).

2) Discussion related to ideal frequency coverage – do we need to go higher than 30 MHz? Shing and Chuck will advise – this will drive much of hardware development. Perhaps include some e-Callisto equipment.

3) Discussion of TFD antenna vs LWA type. Suggestion that it would be good to have an LWA antenna and TFD antenna at the same site for comparison.. Dave suggested ways to make less expensive LWA type antennas than Jim B is building.

4) Shing and Chuck will create a development plan with some levels of detail for such things as educational program aspects, desirable system specifications (such as frequency range to be covered), optimum cluster station locations and spacings, and perhaps a scheduling guideline for planning how to implement the project and get an experimental beta cluster on the air in 2016.

5) Tom suggested looking at available and archived data from existing SUG stations to determine what science can be done with these observations. This is an important point and should probably be at the top level of current program planning.

6) Shing mentioned an August 2017 eclipse that will be visible over eastern USA - what should we plan for in this regard?

7) Shing has previously suggested that the JOVE/SUG join the ISWI program – this needs discussion.

Spectrograph and SkyPipe Data Archiving – Efforts to make the spectrograph data compliant with the PDS standards continue. Current archiving/listing opportunities exist with the VESPA, VWO, and PDS. Discussion of what pieces of metadata are scientifically desirable took place. Jim Sky sent an email to the SUG participants on 9/15 listing the metadata planned for the SPS files. The only addition to Jim’s list put forward (by Shing) is that one time stamp per sweep would be a good idea, when feasible. This may be interpolated from the starting and ending time stamps currently in use; or, they may be inserted in real time when the GPS-based sweep-start-control system becomes a reality. No subtractions from Jim’s list were put forward.

Shing mentioned that the UN’s ISWI program is trying to cope with the difficulty of asking remote observers to submit data in real time. This is similar to the problem faced by SUG observers who wish to submit large files over slower broadband connections. Shing will find out how the ISWI is planning to handle the issue and let us know about their solution(s).

Calibration – nothing new

Polarization Switching – the campaign to modify the FSX series of spectrographs to switch alternate sweeps between RCP and LCP inputs is in progress with Wes’s FSX-1 spectro presently under the soldering iron.

Time Synchronized Spectrographs – Whit is preparing a paper on timing accuracy and has sent around a paper on an arduino/GPS based high accuracy timing system. Andy will continue to work on GPS timing system.

New SDR Developments – Andy is running both an SDR receiver and the FSX machine – comparisons of spectra obtained with the two will be available soon. Jim Brown has comparative data also.

Phase Plane – No news.

Next SUG Telecon 27 October 2015 at 5:00 pm EDT (844) 467-6272, 352297#