CAMAC Progress Report

                    Week Ending: September 27, 2002
                               Week: 87


Tom Folkers:
     1. Was able to code in reference frame subtraction to the optical 
        pointing procedure. That improved signal to noise ratios 
        immensely.
     2. We are now able to observe a complete optical pointing run 
        with no problems. Early results look very good.
     3. I took several deep integrations with the optical camera. I 
        have CCD images of the Orion nebula and the star field around 
        Merope in the Pleiades cluster. I have 10 minute integrations 
        which show that the telescope tracking is rock solid.
     4. Moved the smtofms computer out of the chirp rack and over to 
        the focus translation rack in preparation for the chirp's 
        return and cabling up the focus chassis.

Tom Sargent:
     1. Fixed several minor bugs: log_msg() calls in tracker had too 
        many arguments. They were broken down to two calls instead of 
        1.  The logic writing the "sunBlob" file which describes the 
        solar avoidance zone in az-el coordinates, was getting 
        confused at the next sun rise.  The sloppy movement for small 
        position changes was due to a mistake of a few seconds of time 
        in evaluating the position polynomial for the target. For 
        large movements it was masked by other dynamic corrections, 
        but for short movements it was obvious.  Seems to work well 
        now.
     2. We were able to do an optical pointing run successfully.
     3. The slew algorithm still has a very occasional problem of 
        losing synchronization between the az & el paths (when 
        following a sun-avoid path).  I still need to identify this.  
        It happens pretty rarely, which makes it hard to do.
     4. On Bill's suggestion I am adding a binary data saving feature 
        to the program. As it runs it will save about 80 different 
        parameters to a large circular buffer every 10ms.  These 
        include all tracking & slewing parameters, all I/O status bits 
        to and from the Krupp rack, the tracking polynomial, etc.  The 
        circular buffer holds info on the about the last 10 -15 
        minutes of operation.  This will help trouble shoot any very 
        intermittent problems.  I should have this running next week.

Pete Hubbard:

David Forbes: