Caltech: Marka, Shawhan, Zweizig
     Florida: Klimenko
     Glasgow: Drever
     LHO: Kells, Sigg , Whitcomb
     Michigan: Riles
     Oregon: Leonor, Schofield
     Vancouver: Landry
     Washington State: Bose

E7 Preparations:

• Introduction - KR
 
• The E7 run will start at noon CST (10:00 a.m. PST) Friday December 28 and end 17 days later on Monday January 14 at the same time. Daniel Sigg and Szabi Marka will be the run coordinators at Hanford and Livingston, respectively.
• This meeting is meant in part to review where we stand on E7 preparations and to find out if there are any special requests from the investigation teams.
• Running will be in 24-hour mode at Hanford and Livingston with two operators and two scientists nominally on shift.
• This Friday (12/21) is the deadline for getting new or revised DMT monitors to John for incorporation into the standard lineup for E7.
• Szabi has set up the E7 web site , modelled closely on that of E6.
 
• Interferometer running configurations - S. Whitcomb
 
• The decision on interferometer configurations for E7 has firmed up. The Hanford 2K will run in recycled mode, while the Hanford and Livingston 4K's will run in recombination (no recycling) mode. 
• The Hanford 2K has had periods of stable locking recently, with a record lock stretch of 2 hours, 15 minutes (interrupted by a quake), but at other times is plagued by noise. The best strain sensitivity achieved has been several times 10**-20 / sqrt(Hz) with a minimum around 600 Hz.
• The Hanford 4K presently lacks tidal fine actuation on the end masses, which limits lock stretches to tens of minutes. It's possible that the actuation will be working by the start of E7. The strain sensitivity of the relatively immature 4K is 1 1/2 to 2 orders of magnitude worse than that of the 2K.
• The Livingston 4Khas a significantly better duty cycle in recombination than in recycled mode, hence the decision to run in recombination. The sensitivity is not yet as good as that of the Hanford 2K.
• All three interferometers will have two standard running modes available to operators, a high-sensitivity but fragile set of control parameters for when the environment permits it, and a worse-sensitivity but robust set for noisy conditions. The high-sensitivity mode will be chosen whenever conditions allow consistent lock stretches of several tens of minutes with short reacquisition times. At Hanford, on-site building construction is the main environmental disturbance; at Livingston it's logging and local traffic. 
• The data acquisition systems at both sites will be writing 16-second frame files (instead of the former 1-second frames). This change is transparent to almost all control room programs, but will require changes to most offline analysis programs. Daniel urged John to verify that the DMT can run offline with these new files. John and Szabi have both played with this feature and report that it works, but John will do a more thorough check.
• There has been some trouble with the frame builder at Livingston; a new one is now installed and working.
  

• Run planning - D. Sigg, S. Marka
 
• Given the length of E7 and the intention to use the data for astrophysical analysis, more attention will be given in this run than in earlier runs this year to filling out shift checklists to make sure we know how well the instruments are performing.
• At the end of each shift, each crew should post information on lock history, interferometer sensitivity, and any configuration changes made. Daniel will resurrect and revise shift checklists used in the week-long E2 run a year ago. It was suggested that the feedback solicited from shift-takers during that run be reviewed again. There was a consensus that the checklist tasks in E2 were too time-consuming for their value. 
• Calibration runs will be carried out at the beginning and end of E7 (at night) and once in the middle of the run. Calibration lines will be injected, at the request of Mike Landry, throughout the run to track performance changes. Most likely, one line below and one line above the unity gain point of the differential mode servo.
• There will not be a daily set of inter-site telecons, but time will be reserved in the early evening for such meetings, if needed. After some discussion, it was decided to run 8-8 scientific monitoring shifts at both sites, instead of synchronizing the shift changes.
• Szabi pointed out that online disk space at LLO is tight, precluding the kind of RDS for E7 as produced in earlier runs. If we want the same sort of access from the decatur machine to on-site LDAS disks as we have from the fortress machine at Hanford, we need to make that request soon. KR promised to query the detchar group to see if people really need online access during the run to the cumulative data. (Note a day later: three persons working on engineering run investigations have replied that they do need such access, and a request to LDAS is being made by Szabi.)
  
 
• Scientific monitoring shifts - KR
 
• The current list of scientific monitoring shifts is now complete, and there are backup persons for both sites during most of the run. The few days around the new year are thinnest w.r.t. backups.
  
 
• E7 Investigations - All
  
  
• Organization - The E6 investigations , which were deliberately focussed on E7 preparation, will continue with the same participants and leaders by default. More volunteers are most welcome, however.
  
  
• Special data channel requests and channel status:
 
• The interchannel noise correlation teams are interested in collecting small, customized RDS files at both sites. They will coordinate with Szabi to make sure sufficient space is available at LLO (see above).
• The calibration team will have special, short-lived RDS production during swept sines.
  
• (Note by KR: Peter Shawhan had to leave the meeting early, but will probably want a special RDS that contains the test point(s) used during hardware signal injection tests. See below.)

• Special running requests:
 
• As noted above, the calibration teams at LHO and LLO will try to carry out swept-sine measurements near the start, middle, and end of the run and will likely inject a pair of lines continuously.
• The signal injection team requests two hours to test simultaneous injection at the sites. At the moment, inspiral chirps are planned (already tested during E6 at LLO), and Sukanta Bose will work with Peter to inject stochastic noise of high and low amplitudes over periods of about 30 minutes. Since they will be on shift simultaneously at Livingston and Hanford during the day on January 5, it was agreed to allocate the two hours of testing for that period (assuming the interferometers cooperate).

• Future meetings:

Two more telecons will be held before the run begins, at 6:00 PST on December 26 and 27. These will mainly be inter-site telecons to go over last-minute issues, with perhaps a handful of outside callers. If  more than a handful express serious interest in joining, KR will set up a Michigan-hosted telecon and post calling instructions.