-- Yebes report --

1) Our VLBI operations have stopped due to a mechanical and electrical serious
problem with the 14m dish occurred during the geodetic session on last
December 16th. The OAN engineers are working on the reparation but since our
main concern now is the new 40m telescope, we have limited man power and we
cannot divert it from the 40m, the reparation will take more time than
wished.

2) On October 2003 we received a Mark5 and 4 modules of 8 disks each. The
disks are 180 Gb Western Digital. We have tested the equipment and found some
problems with software versions and cabling between the Mark4 formatter and
the Mark5 system. After lot of help from Haystack we have identified them and
now the problems have apparently been solved.

3) We replaced the EPROM for the Mark4 formatter firmware last December.

4) We have started the bureaucratic procedure to order a second Mark5 system
for the JIVE correlator. I hope it will be sent to JIVE sometime between
August and September 2004.

5) Most of our efforts are now devoted to the new 40m radiotelescope. The
servosystem and subreflector are still under works in Germany. The main
reflector has been mounted in Yebes and it is been painted to avoid corrosion
(photograph attached). Many different contracts (electrical supply, network
cabling, mirror system, cladding, receiver cabin...) are being executed
although they are at early stages.

 We are trying to use the Alma Common Software (ACS) for the control system of
the 40m radiotelescope. As part of this effort we are in touch with ESO and
other institutes like MPIfR (Apex project) to get some assistance from them.
A non-alma ACS workshop was organized in ESO on March 8-9, in which it was
discussed how could ACS be used in different telescopes. You may find more
information on this issue on this link:
http://almasw.hq.eso.org/almasw/bin/view/ACS/ACSWorkshop

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Pablo de Vicente,  http://www.oan.es,  OAN Spain