Research:Radio Engineering
From Astronomy Facility Wiki
Maintenance/improvement log
10/5/06 -Frank, Chris, and Alex separated the telescope's power and data cables and re-routed the data cable in the hopes to reduce unwanted noise.
10/12/06 -Frank created this page.
10/12/06 -Rosalie and Kristina went up to the box and sanded one piece of the wall. We have also left the drop clothes covering Fred Junior and the receiver/amplifier stuff; if someone needs to use any of that, feel free to move it!
10/19/06 -Rosalie and Kristina went up to the box again to sand again, and to their horror found **WATER!!!** had pulled the plastic drop cloth OFF of Fred Jr. and was pooling on the floor. We sanded a little, but now we need to buy plastic roofing cement, climb up to the top of the box, and caulk the holes!
10/23/06 -Roof fixed (at least temporarily!). A very lovely tarp now covers the back part of the roof of the box. Yeah for zip ties and wire!
Sometime in BETWEEN -Everyone trooped up to the roof, took out some of the non-essential equipment out of the box, and brought it back to the office off of B356. This way it will not be damaged by any water that comes through.
11/30/06 -Calibration runs were taken using spiffy eccosorb foam, but once again the group found water dripping into the box. We resecured the tarp to the roof (it had ripped apart and off somewhat) and realized that the bolt where the leaks seem to be coming from is NOT how the water is entering the roof. It enters a looonnnngggg fissure in the roof and goes into a strange middle layer of the roof, where it then slowly drips around the bolt hole into the box near Fred Jr.
12/1/06 -Kristina and Rosalie went up to the roof armed with heavy-duty tar-like caulk and white primer (paint) designed for aluminum and went crazy with it. A lot of the seams and fissures around the edges and in the ceiling (but of course not all) have been caulked by Rosalie. Kristina painted one of the walls and part of the ceiling with the primer. WARNING to anyone using CAULK: Wear gloves because the caulk is not water-soluble or water-removable. To remove caulk from hands, visit the Physics shop in the basement and ask the nice staff there for "Goo Gone." It works beautifully.
2/16/06 We discovered that it would be smart to have the rdesktop command actually posted on the wiki so here it is, enshrined forever. rdesktop -g 1024×728+0+0 128.95.89.111 We are taking calibrations today with liquid nitrogen, dry ice, plain water ice, and metal mesh. Thanks to Bruce for driving us and everyone else for their help! .... however, as we sadly discovered, for some reason the computer broke during our attempts and recorded nothing more than the latitude and longitude of the telescope... We will reattempt this on next Friday!
7/23/07 Well, things have been going on at PRO, albeit slowly. We did take the calibration data over again, although analysis has taken a backseat to the membership's other research commitments. Engineering improvements include David spraypainting some washers with rustoleum and placing them underneath the wire connecting block on the bottom of the motor enclosure. Two longer machine screws were purchased for this purpose. This is to keep the wires dry is any water were to get in the housing, which we have seen some evidence of (corrosion, rust around welds).
Software
Radio:Source_code: Documentation on the source code initially from [[1]]. The code has now been modified for the University of Washington's needs.
