November 23, 2009 Medicina station report to EVN TOG meeting These items cover the period April 2009 - November 2009: 1) Mark5: - We faced some problem with the currently installed version of mark5 software, that we think we can solve by installing the latest release. The sdk 8.3 is anyway required a kernel 2.6 so we are in need to install a new Debian distribution from the scratch (Lenny). - Our disk pool for astronomy is 168TB for a total of 56 packs since now. No disks purchases are planned in the near furture. 2) Field System: - We upgraded the control PC to the Field System Linux version 9.10.4 (FSL8). The last evlbi session was run with the new system without any problems. 3) Receivers: - The 22Ghz multifeed receiver is still mounted on Medicina antenna, waiting to be sent to SRT site. We will continue to use it for the VLBI sessions. - During this year we will also finalize a new receiver in the 5cm band (5.7 to 7.7 GHz), it is due for the commissioning of the SRT but it will be tested on Medicina antenna. We'll try to be ready to partecipate at the first 2010 session. 4) Antenna - The status of the elevation wheel is continuosly monitored, unfortunately the funds for the needed replacement continue to be not avaiable by INAF. 5) e-vlbi: - The shortest path from Medicina to Bologna (40Km), was set up and illuminated at 1Gb/s. Our institute is planning to create a 10 Gb/s POP center in Bologna Headquarters. Medicina is supposed to exploit this point in order to lightpath to JIVE. Devices needed by the 10Gb/s have already been bought. Anyway the time scale is unknown because we must agree with GARR (local network consortium) about costs of the lightpath. 6) Maser: - We have been informed of some phase jumps in our data by the correlators. We found out that the problem was due to a frequency instability of our maser. We are now confident that everything is fixed but our Insitute is investigating (costs are a big issue) the possibility to replace our old EFOS H-Maser. A. Orfei A. Orlati G. Maccaferri