[Bicep2-list] Pole notes: Nov 13

Notes from Pole from the last few days. Zak writing for Chin Lin, Jamie, Colin, Steff, Jon Please forward this on to B2 list as it will probably bounce coming from this USAP address. Friday Nov 9th: Colin arrived the day before with RPS and Uber chopper. Assembled and put up Uber Chopper for BICEP2. Installation actually went really smoothly given its size. Chin Lin worked on RPS assembly and leveling. Saturday Nov 10: More RPS assembly. Started B2 thermal maps with Uber chopper. continued thermal maps on Keck with Ze Choppa First round of Bicep2 data demodulation, tried to get it out on sptr, but turned out we were blocked for sending too many small files Sunday Nov 11: Put RPS on DSL mast! DSL mast did not have any high guide wires, so we had to become riggers for the day and rig up some steel cable to level and stabilize the mast. Very successful, we are now monitoring level with B2 GCP and will estimate level fluctuations due to wind. Started 3 hour raster style beam map at night to verify the source. Steff managed to send out the data files from Saturday. Monday Nov 12: Turned out the chop ref or pin switch was not working on the overnight beam map. Took RPS down, debugged lots of components and it ended up being one of the D-cables inside. Fixed this. Found chopped source in timestreams, started another raster style map just to verify the source works. Verified we see the source. Chin Lin learned how to put files on sptr for Bicep2. There should be Bicep2 data up north for Randol to analyze. Tuesday Nov 13(today): Chin Lin found a problem with B2 uber chopper maps, no demodulated signal. Narrowed it down to the reference flaking in and out, possibly because we have been messing around so much by the B2 mount for the RPS. This intermittent problem is still being debugged, but probably made most of a day worth of beam maps useless. Randol finds the chop speed of the uber chopper to be too slow (~10 Hz). We are planning to take slower rasters with Bicep2 to make up for the slow chop speed. Colin tested a short part of an RPS schedule. Part way through, lost communication with RPS and schedule hung. Colin debugging now. Source is behaving and he can control the stage, so possibly a network error. Jon arrived today, said goodbye to Cynthia. Jon doing a cryo fill with Steff, so Chin Lin and Zak are off the hook except for being backup and support for fills. Notes on delays and schedule: 1) We were supposed to have finished RPS data taking yesterday. Instead, we havent started and we figure we need between 7-10 days of data taking to do the ~24 hour schedules for 5 dk angles and to fridge cycle between each measurement. 2) B2 had scheduled moon maps for the 12th to the 15th, but the sun is actually very close to the moon until the 16th. Instead, we will try to finish thermal maps before the moon comes up, and do moon maps from the 16th to the 19th. This was the time alloted to RPS before, but it will not be available for B2 anyway by this time. 3)Keck will prioritize RPS maps for the three receivers that are to come down early, and continue RPS maps on the other receivers after we have started to warm up. We can catch up on RPS and Uber chopper maps for RX0 and RX2 in December to try to get RPS on Bicep2 earlier. 4)B2 will probably have to sacrifice some of the week long far sidelobe testing or all of the slippage time if we are going to try to fit RPS in for them. That would be roughly the 25th-30th of November.