S4 Plans & Investigations:

• H1 and H2 status (Fred Raab)
  H1 has been struggling for several days. It locks fine, but can't get to full power. (KR added note: H1 recovered during the telecon; the source of the problem turned out to have been a corrupted configuration restore following a reboot of the state vector sequencer to test changes discussed below. Lesson for S5: don't mess with critical code the week before a science run! KR sorely regrets advocating the state vector definition change.)
  H2 is working just great, a continuation of E12 performance.
  
  
• L1 status (Brian O'Reilly)
  L1 has had good inspiral performance, but there is an apparent instability signalled by AS_I saturation that is receiving attention.Recent changes, including fast TCS heating, are being backed out as tests.The IFO is recovering from a power glitch this morning. With Dave Barker's help, Brian has installed the new state vector code. It seems to work in simulation mode, but needs to be tested with the IFO at full power. (KR added note: a later test revealed a problem with the new code in that PSL and MC status were not recognized correctly. The state vector code change was backed out.) There are few more tasks to do before the run begins, once the instability problem is fixed, including final calibration checks.. DMT data dropouts continue at a high rate. A workstation has been identified for dedicated pulsar signal injections.
  
  
• Scimon/operations issue:
  
  
  • State vectors at LHO and LLO (Dave Barker, Brian O'Reilly, Peter Shawhan)
    Peter summarized a proposal to allow the state vector to display "science mode" even during signal injections, with a single bit distinguishing injections from non-injections. The virtue of the scheme is in allowing periods with signal injections to be analyzed identically to non-injection periods. Dave Barker has implemented the changes at LHO. Much discussion ensued, with reluctance expressed by IFO experts to change things with the run starting in only a few days. It was decided to try the change at LLO and to make sure the code had no failures over the next several days. A fallback is to use only a separate ACTIVITY epics channel to flag whether injections are on or off.
    
    
  • Robo-scimon status (Dave Barker, Ashfaq Khan)
    The robo-scimon infrastructure at LHO is fully functioning, following Ash's work during E12. Dave has restored the elog-filling infrastructure at LHO and expects to have the rest working in the next few days.
    
    
  • Scimon shift schedule (Keith Riles)
    More than half of all expert scimon slots have names assigned to them now; all slots in the first week of  S4 have names. There are many trainee slots available at both sites.
    
    
• Calibration plans (Mike Landry, Gaby Gonzalez, Brian O'Reilly, Patrick Sutton, Xavi Siemens)
  Mike had reported by e-mail that he has moved calibration line frequencies to new S4 values on H2, but has been stymied so far in finalizing the H1 configuration by its inability to reach full power. 
  Gaby reported that all L1 calibration files are posted, and the precision is thought to be better than 5% in amplitude and 5 degrees in phase.
  
  
• Timing monitoring plans (Szabi Marka, Daniel Sigg)
  Szabi reported seeing recently a few short-lived glitches of a few microseconds in LHO auxiliary channels, unlike the sustained excursions seen at LLO at the start of E12. He will keep an eye on them; there is no need to set alarms.
  
  
• Reduced data set generation (Greg Mendell, Isabel Leonor, Igor Yakushin)
  Greg reported that RDS generation is all set to go on the software side. One remaining channel selection issue remains concerning the SPOB channel which has different names on different IFO's. After some discussion, the consensus was that the H1 name is SPOB_I, the H2 name is SPOB_MON, and the L1 name is probably SPOB_I. Brian will follow up to make sure. PeterF reported that the stochastic search group has dropped its request for a real-time level-4 RDS.
  
  
• Hardware signal injection plans (Peter Shawhan, Vuk Mandic, Szabi Marka)
  Vuk reported that all of the signal injection code is ready to go. He and PeterSh managed to run all 20 pulsars on a single workstation at LHO, but that machine is the fastest available at LHO and will not be available for injections during S4. It is hoped that the pulsar code can be sped up by using the Sun compiler instead of gcc, but the LAL / LALAPPS libraries have to be compiled. If  hoped-for speed-ups don't suffice, fewer pulsars can be injected. Reverting to the S3 version of make_fake_data is another fallback. Vuk and Peter have received a detailed injection plan request from the stochastic group. PeterSh and Erik will shortly put together a plan for the burst group with 20 injections per day.  The pulsar group has chosen injection frequencies, but not yet the amplitudes. One week will be set aside for no injections, but the week hasn't been chosen. PeterSh mentioned that some injections may be done the day after the run ends. Greg reminded everyone that he and Igor need to be informed of any outside-S4 injections to ensure archiving of the data.
  
  
• PEM injection plans (Robert Schofield, Josh Dalrymple)
  Robert reported by e-mail that the first PEM injections will be at LHO the first week. Brian said he would follow up with Doug Lormand to arrange simultaneous injections at LLO.

DMT Software Status:

• John Zweizig: Infrastructure status (hardware & software)
  John continues to work on reducing DMT data dropouts. He had modified the way memory buffers are allocated which should help with dropouts and also make the monitors more responsive to DMT viewer object requests (a big problem with BurstMon). KR listed monitors he would favor dropping if infrastructure changes don't fix the dropouts, in order of which to drop first: ServoMon, eqMon, SpectrumArchiver, WaveMon, and NdasWriter. John will tag up and compile to make the latest DMT version (2.10.3) this weekend and restart the monitors at both sites. He mentioned that LDAS is down at the moment, but when it comes up the S4 databases will be available at the sites.
  
  
• John Whelan / Mark Cenac / Brian O'Reilly: StochMon
  John reported by e-mail that the same version of StochMon that ran in E12 will be run in S4. Minor wish-list modifications will be deferred. John will update reference spectra for the IFO's in the first week of running.
  
  
• Ken Ganezer: seis_blrms
  Ken has just sent JohnZ the latest code with zeroing out of 3-minute post-dropout intervals. He will complete tests on fortress later today before signing off on using the code for S4.
  
  
• Sergey Klimenko: BurstMon
  Sergey has nothing new to report. All code and config files are ready to go.
  
  
• Giovanni Santostasi: PulsarMon
  Giovanni reported by e-mail that he will be at LLO once again this weekend to troubleshoot PulsarMon. His plan is to back out the new FOM inclusions to the version used in E11 at LHO, but with known bugs fixed. He hopes to get new code to JohnZ by Saturday afternoon.
  
  
• Rauha Rahkola: SuspensionMon
  Rauha found that the largest E12 triggers were due to earthquakes. He will raise thresholds so that only quake level disturbances cause triggers. (Only optic side motion is monitored.)
  

• Next detchar telecon: Friday February 25 at 1:30 p.m. EST (S4 status and DMT software)