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Scheduling

Graham reviewed the pros and cons of the various scheduling programs that were available. For astronomical projects PC-SCHED still seemed to be the most useful. A.E.E. Rogers is currently updating this program and Graham suggested that people ought to write directly to Rogers if they had any useful suggestions as to how the program might be improved. Porcas had already discussed the implementation of two letter codes for stations with both Rogers and Craig Walker. The current single letter code system was ambiguous, especially for VMS which does not distinguish between upper and lower case letters.

Schilizzi felt that a better source catalogue was required with accurate positions. This might form part of the responsibilities of JIVE support personnel. Porcas remarked that the station coordinates produced by the PI were no longer used at the correlator. Alef reported that the coordinates are available on the Bologna VAX (ASTBO1). Foley suggested that source catalogues ought to be placed on-line at ASTBO1. It was agreed that this was a good idea though Foley noted that it would have to be updated. Graham asked how long it took the WSRT to get an accurate position for a source. Foley replied that it was not routine, requiring more than one short cut observation but that one might be able to do it in less than 24hours. Foley asked if man power was available to add source positions obtained at the correlator to the Bologna VAX. Graham felt that there was not but that this might become the responsibility of the JIVE support personnel for example.

Schultze brought up the problem of MkIII tape labels. In many cases these had to be generated from the .DRG file with PC-SCHED. To avoid this unnecessary extra work load PI's should be duty bound to produce label extents. Foley complained about late schedules and multiple copies. He suggested that the Bologna VAX should be set up so that schedules arriving less than a week before the session deadline should be bounced. This did not receive wide spread support. Schultze also highlighted the problem of missing cover letters. It was agreed that this was a serious problem since it was often difficult to establish whether the experiment was non-standard or where tapes/logs should be sent.

Schilizzi suggested that an explicit deadline date for schedules should appear in the call for proposals. However, Bregman noted that there was no point in making up these rules if we were not prepared to apply them.

Garrett suggested that it might be useful to expand the ASTBO1 service by introducing a bulletin board service. This would allow VLBI users to share and exchange information regarding particular problems peculiar to VLBI. Alef suggested that it might be possible to set up a VLBI (USENET) newsgroup. A second possibility was a mail exploder but many felt that this would not be appropriate. Burgess commented that the ASTBO1 service was a great success and much appreciated by the VLBI community at large. Garrett asked for input to the EVN Newsletter which he had decided to revive in the forthcoming year. Schilizzi felt that it should be frequent but small if it were to survive. The present idea is that the Newsletter be sent out with the 'Call for Proposals' issued by R. Schwartz.