2019 March
Mar 15
20:49 UT It has been a long time since I wrote into the observing log, mainly because operation has been extremely automatic, but lately we have had a number of problems that I thought I should document. Today at around 16:50 UT the DPP crashed (again!). I only noticed it now (no telling where the Tohban was...) and have rebooted it. I also decided to reboot the ACC, since it is a long time since that was done. I got everything back in service by 21:08, including ant13. The wind has been VERY high in the last few days, but it is down today, so maybe the calibration will succeed and I can get data on all antennas. I will describe other issues later.
Mar 30
16:09 UT It is notable that a flare-productive active region appeared and produced a number of B and C events over Mar 21-25. However, there are several problems which I list here: The DPP continues to crash, due to the need to continually (every 15 minutes) reset the network interfaces. When that is done too many times, apparently there is some chance that it does not occur cleanly, causing the DPP to crash. Even with no crash, each reset results in 2 s loss of data. An alternative is to let the dppxmp program fail, and relaunch itself after ~ 10 s gap. This avoids resetting the network, but then we lose about 20 s of data every 15 minutes, which seems too much. For now we will continue to reset the network. At present, Antenna 2 has an Az drive that is sticking, so we cannot run it. Also, the two solar power stations that power antennas 12 and 13 are both operating poorly due to the batteries being too old (~ 4 years). We ordered new batteries, which will be installed in a week or two. Until that happens, the power goes out on antenna 13 every night, so we have very spotty ant 13 data. Ant 12 used to go out every night, but as the days grow longer it can now survive most nights.