Version 6.04

Version 6.04.1 is version 6.04 except that a the sources.vlba catalog has been fixed to remove duplicate aliases and to restore a very small number of aliases that were lost in 6.04.

The major enhancement in the 6.04 version is the addition of OPTMODE=HAS which can be used to construct certain kinds of schedules automatically from an input schedule that is basically a source list. In this mode, SCHED tries to spread the scans on each source in hour angle subject to various constraints. In its current form, it is most useful for scheduling survey type observations. Future enhancements will make it more useful for phase referencing and other modes. For more information, see the OPTMODE description.

This release includes everything that was in the 6.03 mini-releases that occurred since 6.02. Those mini-releases were not sent to the broader community and were intended mainly to make available the new OPTMODE=HAS for use by the VIPS survey, which started before we could do a proper SCHED release.

Change log:

Version 6.04.1:

• Remove duplicate aliases from some sources in the source catalog. Correct missing aliases in a small number of sources. RCW April 2006

• Add Sec(z) to the XY plot options. Franco Tinarelli Feb. 10, 2006.

Version 6.04:

• If VLA phasing mode scans were NORECORD, SCHED warned about unphased VX mode scans. Change to recognize non-recording phasing scans. 8 Aug 2005.

• Add station motion adjustments to summary file. 5 Aug 2005 Craig.

• Fix bug that might cause reading beyond the end of a character string if CORREL is specified as blank. 10 Aug Craig based on information from Cormac.

• Update Sla/dat.f for the leap second announced for Jan. 1, 2006. 11 Aug. 2005. Craig.

• Send first message warning of possible unspecified OBSTYPE to the terminal when SCHED runs. 14 Sept. 2005.

• Comment a redundant SAVE command in state.f in the Jpl ephemeris routines. This gave gfortran a problem. 16 Sept. 2005

• Change OPMINANT and OPMINEL to be scan dependent. 25 Oct. 2005

• Fix the sync time discussion in the PRESTART section. 1 Nov. 2005 Craig

• Fix dealing with sources when loading a plot parms file when the source list has changed since the parms file was saved. 1 Nov. 2005.

• Add hour angle based optimization mode OPTMODE=HAS. Initial application is the VLBA Imaging and Polarization Survey (VIPS). 03 Nov 2005 Craig

• Add the scan comment to the scan information dumped when certain errors occur. 14 Nov 2005 Craig

• Add note to users of tapeini sections that they normally are not needed and such use betrays the use of ancient templates. 15 Nov 2005 Craig

• Improve the choice of the maximum separation for the list of source separations. 14 Nov 2005 Craig.

• Add scan number to summary listings. Add optional scan name based on SCANTAG input variable. 18 Nov 2005 Craig.

• Protect against having a Vex station with no observations after taking out scans where the source is not up. This befuddles the Vex writer. Warn the user if this happens for any other station. 18 Nov 2005 Craig.

• Only require shipping address for correlator output if tape is requested. 08 Jan. 2006 Craig.

• Warn users when it looks like they might have forgotten to reset FREQ or BW when changing setup files. 24 Jan 2006 Craig.

• Fix bug in overlapped basebands warning when using Doppler calculations. 25 Jan. 2006 Craig.

• Added CRDLINE to aid development of VLBA on-line software. 26 Jan. 2006 Craig.

• Improve documentation of reconfigure issues. Jan 27, 2006. Craig.

• Warn when trying to use 1024 channels, fanout=1, and 16 times oversample on the VLBA correlator. It won't work. Feb. 2006. Craig.

• Fix selection of the frequency to use when plotting beams. Fix dealing with the save file stations when the station list changes. Other minor plot fixes. Franco Tinarelli and Craig Feb. 2006

• Fix bug in correlator resync accounting. Make more visible warnings about scans lost to resyncs. Craig 20 Feb. 2006

• Prevent short stoppages of recordings for scan boundaries at midnight. Craig 22 Feb. 2006.

• Added 11 seconds to TSETTLE for phased VLA (VLA27) as per recommendation from Jim Ulvestad. He actually recommended 12 sec, but since his schedule was made, acceleration parameters were changed for this station adding about a second. Craig 23 Feb. 2006.

• Update source catalog to current VLBA correlator data base which John Benson just updated. The main change was to the geodetic sources which are now from the 2005f_astro solution from GSFC. Users are encouraged to reference the original papers when they use sources from this catalog. Those references, along with images and uv plots for many sources, can be found at at this link. Craig 28 Feb. 2006.

• Increase maximum number of sources in a schedule to 1000 after user request. Craig 2 Mar. 2006.

• Allow use of modes with FORMAT=NONE with VEX output. Must set parameter 'OVERRIDE' for this to be allowed. Scans with FORMAT=NONE are skipped with a comment only written to the VEX file. Cormac 2 Mar. 2006

• More rigorous testing for frequency of Tsys measurements at VEX stations with more informative warnings. Cormac 2 Mar. 2006

• Add checks for long continuous motion with disks because bank switches can only occur during gaps at VEX stations. Cormac 2 Mar. 2006

• Fixed bug which meant that spurious new modes could be created where none were required (reported in GB057). Cormac 2 Mar 2006

• Updated most station positions to the 2005f_astro solution from the GSFC. March 2006, Craig.

• Applied update of ATNF freq.dat parameters from Chris Phillips March 22, 2006 Craig.