NRAO AIPS++ Users Group Meeting - MINUTES

Date: 2005-01-26 (Wednesday)
Time: 1300 MST
Video Hub: SOC-conf (CV should call in to Socorro)
Rooms: SOC317/CV311

1. NAUG News

   o NOTE FOR FUTURE MEETINGS: CHECK THAT THE TV IN THE AOC CONF ROOM IS ON!!!
     My apologies to the CV gang for having to watch us with no sound...
     we really didn't know you had called in (and we didn't notice the camera
     moving about)!

   o NOTE: At Joe's suggestion we will be hold the NAUG meetings on the 4th
     Wednesday of the month (as the releases are generally mid-month, so
     this is better for testing) and the NAWG meetings on the 2nd Wednesday.

2. AIPS++/ISD Status Report

   o stable SS10 status (Joe) - SS10 is late due to some problems, hopefully
        it will be available by the weekend.  SS10 items will be added
        to the testing page. See below for more on testing.

   o defect status (Joe) - last bug marathon was held in December and was
        successful in clearing a significant number of defects (many that
        were no longer relevant).  In particular, a large number of bugs
        associated with the tool manager were wiped away by removing the
        tool manager - however, this solution to dealing with problem 
        code elicited a rather snarky emails from a couple of users that
        did not improve Joe's Christmas.

   o development targets (Joe) - SS11 key items will include averaging (e.g.
        CH0 for spectral line) and the first trials of the tasking interface.
        There will also be an intermediate SS10.1 (Feb 15) that will serve as
        the set for the NAUG TST2 testing, which should include some of the
        MS-selection capability (deferred from SS10).

   o ALMA & EVLA targets (Joe, Debra) - a master target list has been drawn
        up that relates the ALMA and EVLA requirements items.  Debra has gone
        through both sets of requirements and entered them into a spreadsheet
        that lists both.  From Debra:

        "I've compared the EVLA and ALMA offline requirements.  At the 
        SSR TWiki: 

        http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/bin/view/SSR/EVLARequirements

        you will find an excel spread sheet with the comparison.  Red text
        indicates that alma should probably add or expand a requirement. Blue
        text indicates differences but either I don't think any thing needs
        changing or I do not have adequate information to assess the
        differences (e.g. pulsar or solar observing)."

3. ALMA

   o TST2.0 plans (Joe, Steve) - Dates are Feb 15 (internal, NAUG) and Apr 1
        (external).  The test is focused on addition of single dish data to
        interferometer mosiacs using feathering and joint deconvolution.
        There are two tests: 

        (1) The N4928 BIMA dataset (from TST1.1) plus 12-m single dish data

        (2) VLA + GBT data on Orion.

        See the TST2 page:
	http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/almatst2.0/ALMA_TST2.0.html

        Goals of test:
        http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/almatst2.0/test.scope.txt

        List of testers:
        http://aips2.nrao.edu/projectoffice/almatst2.0/testers.info.txt
        
        NAUG testers will be John H., Ed F., Walter B., Steve M., Debra S.
        The first 3 will start testing after Feb 15, the last 2 will join
        in later on.

4. EVLA

   o upcoming testing & datasets (Steve, Sanjay, Bryan) - The scope of this
        test was decided to be mostly on wide-field (narrow-band) imaging.
        Although eventually we would like to test the editing and calibration
        also, it was thought that this test should be focused. Two datasets
        were proposed: 

        (1) a deep L-band field from Frazer (ABCD configs)

        (2) a deep L-band field of the Chandra DeepField South from Ed
            (BnC config)

        It was thought that we could probably do both, but that the Dec -27 of
        (2) might cause some problems.  However, (2) is a smaller dataset and
        might be easier to handle.  Frazer said he could provide (1) in three
        versions: 

        (a) raw

        (b) edited/calibrated/compressed

        (c) edited/calibrated/compressed with outlying sources subtracted.

        Version (c) would the the easiest to work with, but Kumar was looking
        into whether the code could handle placing outlying fields on sources
        away from the main facets.

5. Main Event - Presentations and Discussion Items

   o Testing targets (Joe, Steve) - the SS10 targets are:

         History

         Incremental Calibration 

         Single dish plus interferometric imaging (ALMA TST2)

     See the testing page for details when SS10 is checked in.  Joe will
     notify the NAUG when these are available.

   o Tasking framework progress and issues (Joe) - a demo will be available
        for SS11, possibly in next month's meeting, probably in March.
        Stay tuned.

   o Upcoming - Steve promised to deliver the EVLA Use Case and Test Cases
        that he has been working on.

6. AIPS++ Developments - see latest targets and info at Project Office:
     http://projectoffice.aips2.nrao.edu/

7. Upcoming meetings and deadlines:
   o 2005 Feb 9          NAWG meeting
   o 2005 Feb 15         Internal NAUG ALMA TST2 testing begins
   o 2005 Feb 23         NAUG meeting
   o 2005 Mar 1-3        RadioNet meeting (Jodrell Bank, UK)
   o 2005 Apr 1          External ALMA TST2 begins
   o 2005 Apr 1          Internal NAUG EVLA TST2 begins

   The agendas for past NAUG meetings are archived at:
   http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/agenda/

   The minutes for past NAUG meetings are archived at:
   http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~smyers/aips++/minutes/