Torun (Tr) Station Report

(TOG Meeting, Torun, April 17th, 2009)


Brief Report of Recent EVN Sessions Problems

In the October-November 2008 session Tr was scheduled to observe for 17 experiments at 6 and 18 cm wavelengths. All these observations were performed without any major problem.
The February-March 2009 session was longer and in Tr consisted of 26 experiments at wavelengths of 5, 6 and 18 cm. Observations generally passed smoothly. Small perturbations arised initially because of the new Mark5a software (SDK8) which wouldn't extract the FTP file, but very soom JIVE experts amended the problem by supplying a patch. We also lost some recording time in two C-band experiments due to a problem with the recorder. It doesn't tolerate moving of partly recorded packs from the bank B to bank A and hangs up (which in the past might have been mistakenly attributed to a failing diskpack). Now it appears that this problem concerns all Mark5A units.
For these two sessions we experimentally posted some of our calibration data in the internet in the form of graphs of the noise diode equivalent temperature (Tcal) and system equivalent temperature (Tsys) for each experiment. See these links:
  Tcal and Tsys in Sesssion 3/08 (October 2008)
  Tcal and Tsys in Sesssion 1/09 (Feb/Mar 2009)

Personnel Changes
No changes in this category.

Changes/Upgrades Made to Hardware/Software

  • A second processor has been mounted on the matherboard of Mark5A along with a stronger (1000 W) power supply
  • Mark5A OS is now Debian "Etch" version 4.0 with the package mark5a_1.0.2-i386.deb
  • Mark5A application code is Mark5A2007y.225d
  • FS 9.9.2 version has been used in both sessions.

    e-VLBI
    The station has participated in all regular, testing and demonstration experiments organized by JIVE. As proved during recent experiments and tests, our Mark5A and fibre connection are now capable of sending e-VLBI data to JIVE at the rate of 1024 Mb/s.

    Kaz Borkowski, Magda Kunert-Bajraszewska & Genek Pazderski