AMiBA Engineering Telecon Minutes
18, Oct. 2001


Chair: K.Y. Lo
Participants: B. Martin, J. Peterson (USA)
M. Sinclair (ATNF)
H. Wang, T.D. Chiueh, M.T. Chen, Y.J. Hwang, H.M. Jiang, C.H. Lien, C.J. Ma, K. Lin, P. Shaw (Taipei)

Summary

MMIC:
 Bob draft a letter to answer TRW sales questionnaires, he sent a copy to Huei, Fred and Paul for comments.

OMT/Photonic LO:
 Regarding the joint project proposal raised by J. Payne, Mingtang made some comments by email. He has assembled and tested two OMT modules, the test result is pretty good, and he will send the data to NRAO and Jeff. Mingtang thinks we can do assembly & testing here for all of the OMT we need, and The Chungshang Institute should be able to do the block fabrication. But their price is higher than J&E. He will track down the status of The Chungtang Institute one or two weeks. As for the Photonic LO, Mingtang thinks it is more like a researching & developing approach. But for the conventional micro- wave approach, he thinks we should able to make it. Timing and cost are crucial to us; we have no manpower to develop the photonic LO if we decide to go with the conventional one. Eugene says we have two solutions to make the calibration for LO. Fred concludes out position is clear we can not accept the photonic LO approach for AMiBA in any stage, and if we have people to do the research, we will get involved and so on.

Prototype mount:
Philippe will come to Taipei 21, Oct, and to finish the design by end-Oct. Mal and his colleague will sketch a mount layout according the data provided by Philippe.

Hilo lab & office:
Bob prepared a draft lease agreement for Hilo lab and office; he sent it to CSO people and Paul for comments as well. He had made little modification on that draft according the comments of CSO & Paul. ASIAA should sign the rental agreement with CSO and the rent will be paid at quarterly interval. That agreement will begin on Dec.1, 2001 and end on May 31, 2002.

60cm apparatus:

A science meeting will be taken place next week to discuss the possibility of using the 60cm apparatus for the polarisation experiments, this could be extend the polarisation experiments of what CBI doing. If scientifically that make sense to do, so then we have to do now to get the 60cm dishes.


Action items

  1. Bob/Fred Bob will resend the draft letter for TRW to Hilo office, Fred will read it and call Bob tomorrow. Huei will email his comments to Bob shortly.
  2. Bob/ Bob will send an email to MLO people who in charge the site, in order to track down the status and figure out how to proceed.
  3. Bob/ Bob will figure out a test plan specifying how to measure the dishes on platform at site.
  4. Eugene/Milton/West: Eugene, West & Milton will modify the SHM block design according the comments of Henry Kanoniuk.
  5. Mal/ Mal will talk to Mike and Warwick to look into the possibility of making the 60cm diameter dishes in Australia.
  6. Paul/ Paul will set up a science meeting to discuss the possibility of using the 60cm apparatus for the polarisation experiments.


Next meeting date/time: Thursday, 25, Oct. at 8:30AM Taipei time