CARA Telecon Minutes Date: May 14, 2001 Time: 1:00 PM Attendance: BU: T. Bania Cornell: G. Stacey CMU: J. Peterson NU: G. Novak R.I.T: S.A.O.: T. Stark, A. Lane, W. Walsh South Pole: C. Martin, C. Kaminski Chicago: J. Carlstrom, A. Harper, S. Meyer, N. Odalen R. Pernic, R. Landsberg, R. Loewenstein J. Bausch UCB: W. Holzapfel UCSB: J. Ruhl Approval of previous minutes: Minutes accepted from last 4 meetings by Telecon participants. Agenda Items News from the Pole: C. Martin commented that the weather has been bad the past week. AST/RO AZ encoder related problem was fixed. Vacuum on dewar was soft. With Tau (350um tipper) at 3, Chris took the opportunity to work on the dewar. Tau is now at 2 and starting to go down. Viper - Power outage caused possible serious damage to the electronics due to heating/cooling bugs which are now hopefully fixed -- sounded like a complete distaster. W. Holzapfel was under the impression that the azimuth encoder might be damaged. C. Kaminski stated that he understood that as of last night the encoder was working fine. *** need to hear status after the team has had a chance to fully understand the system after fixing the power outage triggered problems. *** AASTO is working fine except for the SODAR, which is still off line. Charlie is waiting for the Australian team to try to resolve problem. Other Reports from the Projects: AST/RO - T. Stark reported that the problem with the encoder was a bad cable. AST/RO is again ready to observe HDO at 460GHz. When weather improves, Chris Martin will be back taking data. DASI - is plugging away. ACBAR - Drift scans data looked good. We are now waiting for Viper to get back up and running. SPIFI - Plans are to rebuild the dewar and instrument. Should be ready for the 2003 winter. Last run at JCMT went well and actually had reasonable weather. Financial - subawards are being processed by Chicago. If you are receiving REU funds, you will need to complete a NSF form 1030 budget and work statement. These can be faxed to N. Odalen. We would like to process only one amendment per institution if possible. Any questions please contact N. Odalen. SIPs - all information has been submitted electronically. If any adjustment is needed by a project, the project PI should notify R. Pernic immediately. 34 liters per day for the entire season was requested on the SIPs for helium. Last year 30 liters per day was requested. There will be two ships coming in the McMurdo this season. One is coming in mid January with a supply of helium that will go to Pole. The second ship will also have helium for the Pole. At the end of the season all dewars on station are to be full including the small storage dewars. Concerns were voiced by J. Ruhl that helium supply sounds as if it will be marginal for the coming season. *** J. Ruhl to check memo from R. Pernic to see if request to Raytheon for helium is correct. *** Hobart Travel - The following individuals will travel to this conference. A. Harper, J. Jackson, T. Bania, J. Peterson, R. Pernic and either J. Carlstrom or E. Leitch. 2002 support for Polar Operations - J. Carlstrom sent email to C. Erb, E. Chang and D. Peacock regarding the winterover at large for CARA. This individual needs to be hired now. C. Erb understands and has requested that D. Peacock react once he returns to the office. J. Carlstrom also mentioned that the issue of interim funding for CARA needs to be decided within the next couple months. Current helium - reported by J. Ruhl 3000 gallon dewar - Day 70-130 calculations of helium show a boil off rate of between 20-25 litters per day. If this number is really correct then this is bad news as this is a higher boil off rate than originally calculated on the spreadsheets presented during the Project Meeting in March. If differential pressure gauge is correct then it is expected that we will be out of helium in August. Earlier in the season G. Novak had J. Alcorda write up a memo on how the dewars were filled. ***J. Ruhl to review this memo and see if we can believe the differential pressure gauge. Task this week is getting info together to see what is happening.*** ***J. Ruhl requested that C. Kaminski look up flow meter model and actual readings and report to J. Ruhl.*** Bottom line there is a difference between flow meter and differential pressure gauge. We need to determine which is most accurate.