NIKA dry run organization

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Goals of the run

1. Check that the delays and holes in NCS data streams do not explode again when NIKA is running, and stay at a marginal rate until the problem is definitely solved.
2. Debug the IMBFITS formating so that they are at last produced without errors, and finally allow real time processing.
3. Test for the first time operations with only IRAM Granada personnel at the Telescope and NIKA Grenoble team using remote control.

Organization Plan

The dominant components of the goals 1 and 2 do not necessitate sensitive KID, so no cool down of the instrument is necessary. However the full instrumental setup for observations must be operational; this includes the electronic chain and real scans of the telescope commanded via PaKo.

• Remark: We could test the new network cabling installed in the cable spiral room for the future control of the NIKA2 compressors, keeping the electronics at its storage location and making it run to control the detectors acquisition via the network from there. But we have decided to lift it up in the cabin hence mimicking real observations as much as possible with a warm cryostat, since the problems we had may be related to the network setup we used.

  We will debug the IMBFITS step by step. People involved in the NIKA data & IMBFITS making & checking (Albrecht, Juan MP, Xavier, Alain, Robert, Samuel, and possibly Walter and Nicolas P) communicate via this wiki page to establish very clearly the main problems and actions to do to solve them (see tables below), and possibly use the data we currently have to start debugging, so that we are as ready as possible for May 7. After this dry run, we will make the status, and determine a date for another short test run (e.g. begin of June ?). Hopefully for this one only the problems that necessitate valid KID data remain (e.g. KID flags). In that case this short run would be cold.

Table of IMBFITS problems to solve

The NIKA IMBFITS have had problems since their first creation (2^nd test run, Oct 2010). The latest exhaustive list of problems dates from the run 6 (June 2013) processing and has been [http://www.iram.fr/wiki/nika2/index.php/RZdataProc|tabulated on a dedicated wiki page], most of them are still valid. For reading convenience we gather here only the most important ones that need to be solved with the May 7 dry run.

|| Problem number (and origin) || Description of the problem || Status || How to identify & diagnose the problem !! How to investigate and possibly solve the problem || || 1 (NCS) || Some scans miss some antenna traces. || Problem became pandemic during pool 1 (run 8, Feb 2014). Should be marginal after mrt-lx1 kernel update by GP, to be verified as goal #1 of this dry run. || Monitor time vs sample number. || Monitor network & mrt-lx1 activity. || || 2 (IMBFITS) || KID parameter hard coded in IMBFITS definition causing fatal error when mismatch with data characteristics (e.g. numbers of KIDs). || Partially solved: AS formating scripts now reads the NIKA Kidpar to read the parameters, but miss a complete description of the Kidpar by the NIKA team || Check reading errors messages when MOPSICS reads the IMBFITS || Need good communication between NIKA team (FXD ?) & AS. || || 3 (IMBFITS or NCS or NIKA ?) || Mis-synchronization of subscans in the IMBFITS tables: some subscans are incomplete and partially wrongly appear in the following subscan table. || Not solved, origin of the problem unknown. || Check subscans lengths in IMBFITS || Compare with NIKA FITS, check subscan start and end keywords used... || || 4 (NIKA) || KIDs flags sometimes wrong (god/bad KID mis-identified). || Solved after run 8 on NIKA side. Need to be double checked. || Process corrected IMBFITS and match KID characteristics with flag signification || Need cleared documentation of the flags signification. ||

Task list