TOG - Agenda, March 19, 2018

  1. Local Arrangements/Opening Remarks (Bin Li, Vicente)
  2. Approval & last minute additions to Agenda (all)
  3. Acceptance of minutes from last meeting (all; Minutes Ventspils meeting)
  4. Review of Action Items from last meeting (all; see Action Items from last meeting )
  5. Review of Permanent Action Items (all; see Permanent Action Items)
  6. Reliability/Performance of the EVN
    • Reliability/Performance of the EVN. New web page with Grafana (Blanchard)
    • NME results (Blanchard)
    • Feedback from last sessions. New Grafana web page (Blanchard)
    • Issues from last session (Campbell, Vicente)
    • New EVN communication channel: Mattermost (Blanchard)
  7. Amplitude Calibration
    • Quality of calibration. New web page (Blanchard)
    • Review of continuous cal: availability at stations (Vicente)
    • Continuous cal: processing at the correlator (Campbell, Blanchard)
    • Reminder of antabfs script (Vicente)
  8. VLBI backends
    • DBBC2 firmware issues: V105E, V106 and PFB modes (all).
    • Other VLBI backends: MDBE
    • Other VLBI backends: OCTAD (Jung)
  9. Recorders: Mark 5,6, Flexbuf
    • jive5ab & m5copy news? (Verkouter)
    • Status: Mark 5A/B/B+/C software, firmware, SDK9 (all, Verkouter)
    • Disk inventory and purchase status (Vicente, all)
    • Flexbuff status and 2 Gbps (all)
    • Possible flexbuff upgrades: more space (Vicente)
  10. Stations
    • Current status of eMerlin in the EVN (Varenius)
    • Status on Nk in Ghana. (Duah Asabere)
    • Kunming (?)
  11. EVLBI
    • Current correlator capabilities and future ones.
    • KVAZAR network integration in the eVLBI. Dates.
    • 2 Gbps at the remaining stations.
  12. Technical Developments
    • 4 Gbps status. Last tests (Vicente)
    • Auxiliary scripts. Central repository (Vicente)
    • DBBC3. Current status, backwards compatibility and available firmware (Tuccari)
    • BRAND update (Tuccari)
    • Future backends compatibility: MDBE, CDAS2, DPV, DBBC3, OCTAD
    • Uniboard correlator.
  13. JIVE
    • Technical Operations and R&D at JIVE, (Szomoru)
  14. VLBA
    • VLBA status report (?)
    • Globals and recording compatibility
  15. Field System, status and new features
    • Status report, new developments? (Himwich)
    • List of priorities for next version (All, Vicente)
  16. Long term future
    • Technological developments for the future. How should we prepare: 1 GHz IFs? Optical fibers from Rxs?
    • Wide bands: low and high frequency bands
    • RFI: measurement and mitigation
    • DBBC3 tests & future implementation at the FS
  17. Jumping JIVE
    • WPs
  18. Date and place of the next TOG meeting
    • Granada.
  19. AOB