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Previous: The Role/Format of the TWG
Up: EVN TWG/Friends Meeting
Next: EVN receivers and Frequency flexibility
Previous Page: Scheduling
Next Page: EVN receivers and Frequency flexibility
Junor discussed the present status of the VLBA. All antennas were expected to be working by the second quarter of next year. All receivers would be available by the middle of the year. The 610 and 327 receivers are still being worked on. 2cm went on in the third quarter of 1992. There are 2 VLBA recorders at each site (except Mauna Kea). The MkII recorders have been re-distributed to reflect the range of spacing required by the users. If the EVN wants to retain MkII recording then they ought to make representations to NRAO. Four hundred and fifty thin tapes had been purchased recently, to be used in the first quarter of next year. The Greenbank 140ft telescope has plans to upgrade to narrow track recording. This may be ready for the next VLBI session. A nine station VLBA experiment had been successfully correlated at Socorro. A new scheduling package VLBAOBSERVE would be released soon. Information is required from the observatories. A test edition should be available next month.
It was requested that the number of antennas in the WSRT array be available to the PC committee. Burgess enquired if there should be more cross-talk between the EVN and the VLBA. Porcas suggested that a letter of invitation should be sent to Craig Walker asking for a VLBA representative to be sent to the TWG meeting. Burgess suggested that this arrangement should work both ways and that the EVN should send a representative to VLBA meetings. Junor noted that there were so many meetings it would be difficult to chose between them. Schilizzi requested that an agenda be sent to the EVN TWG chairman in advance. Porcas felt that we should go further and that a special meeting should be arranged to discuss global VLBI observations and to include representatives from the VLBA/EVN,and other US telescopes (Greenbank, Arecibo & DSN). Junor encouraged the EVN to use the new TRACK program which Alef had discussed previously. On compatibility issues Porcas suggested that 2cm should be considered to be a standard band. The other major topic was recording problems most of which were known and had been discussed previously. Bregman passed round details of the VLBA, MkIII and MkIV systems. Bregman also raised the issue of BBC compatibility between MkIII and IV. The upgrade to MkIV required the BBC to be fitted out with 8MHz filters. Bregman suggested that we might as well go straight to 16MHz filters. However, Porcas felt that 8MHz filters would be required as well as 16MHz filters to give full compatibility across the network. In addition, PI's might want 8x8MHz rather than 4x16MHz filters for some projects. Burgess suggested that we consider constructing filters ``in house''. Foley considered whether we could just throw away the 1MHz filters. Alef noted that we had no choice in this matter if we were to accomodate the 8MHz filters.
Burgess suggested that the EVN should be looking at the areas where we are strong e.g. collecting area at low frequencies. However, Schilizzi felt that we should not specialize too much but be prepared to be involved with a wide range of scientific projects at all frequencies. Porcas asked Junor if an EVN only experiment could be correlated at Socorro. Junor replied that this had not been considered - the VLBA was still focusing on it own internal problems at the moment.