Related Programs

This section briefly describes other programs that may be of use when using SCHED.

SKEDCONV:

Used to convert a SKED or drg file from a Mark III scheduling program into a SCHED  keyin file. The resulting SCHED  keyin file should be complete if all of the questions are answered properly. However a setup file will need to be provided. Special attention should be paid to the frequencies and track assignments when making the setup file.

PC-SCHED

A program, written at Haystack Observatory, for scheduling Mark III projects. It is advertized to read a simple SCHED  keyin file if that has already been made, but that is not its normal mode of operation. PC-SCHED writes a SKED or drg file that can be used by DRUDG to produce snap files for the Mark III stations. The SKED or drg file can also be converted with SKEDCONV to a SCHED  keyin file for scheduling VLBA stations. DRUDG can produce VLBA control files and this ability is used by the geodetic community, but rarely by astronomers. The VLBA control files from PC-SCHED should not be used since that part of the program is out-of-date.

SKED

The traditional scheduling program for Mark III. It produces SKED or drg files that are converted to snap files by DRUDG, but that can also be used, via SKEDCONV and SCHED or DRUDG, to schedule the VLBA. It has sophisticated automatic scheduling capabilities, well beyond what is available in the optimization modes of SCHED, for geodetic projects.

UPTIME:

Used to determine when sources will be visible from stations of interest. The plotting and summary capabilities in SCHED  duplicate the function of UPTIME, so this program is no longer distributed with SCHED. UPTIME also does coordinate equinox conversions and Doppler calculations. For the latter, a velocity needs to be provided in the source catalog and a line frequency in the program input. The Doppler values will be for the center of the Earth, which is within 1 km/s for any station and is an appropriate value for VLBI observing. All of these capabilities exist in SCHED.