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Daily Reports

Oct 29th, Tuesday

10:30; Federico De Luca, Stefano Andreon and Angel Bongiovanni at the telescope. Juan Macías can join in remote mode. Adverse weather: snow/electrical storm, strong wind gusts. A bolt stroke apparently affected the power supply of the anemometer at the station (to be checked after storm; spare part is prepared).

15:30-23:00; Federico, Angel: The syntheziser of array 1 was substituted by NEEL's unit and everything (cryostat health, noise traces, etc.) has been checked by Dave. The instrument is ready for observations. Telescope stopped, deicing on. Weather forecasts are adverse at least until midnight.

23:00-24:00: Juan, Angel: Bad weather continues. Wind gusts, despite tau_225GHz ~0.5. Deicing still on.

Oct 30th, Wednesday

00:00-07:00: Juan: Wind, snow.

07:00-15:00; Stefano: Still stopped. Wind, light snow.

15:00-23:00; Federico: Strong wind gusts. Snowing at intervals.

Oct 31st, Thursday

00:00-07:00: Juan: Strong wind (~25 m/s according to OSN anemometer) at midnight, dropping speed over the shift. Snowing until ~04h and tau_225GHz > 1.2 all the time. Deicing off at ~05:30. Snowing again since ~06h. Cloudy at dawn.

07:00-15:00; Stefano: Bad weather (strong wind, low visibility), yet better than previous days.

15:00-23:00; Federico: Anemometer repaired (~15:10). Wind speed about 10m/s, but it's a cloudy afternoon (tau~1). Waiting for better weather condition. At 17h the weather is much better. Starting scientific observation with EMIR, project 058-24. After first calibration, we moved to test account to check if all is ok & pointing and focus. tau_225 is continuously dropping. All ok, at ~17:30 started scientific obs. of 058-24, NOTF6V, NOTF7H, NOTF7V done. tau-225~0.6 for all the observation. Spindle error during NOTF7H, script interrupted and launched again. After NOTF7V, larger instability in tau and anomalous refraction evidence in pointing. Starting monitoring the weather under test account. Resumed observation of project 058-24, NOTF8h (21:55h). Then changed project to 017-24. Juan takes over with Angel.

Nov 1st, Friday

0:00-06:00: Juan, Angel: taking over from Federico. Two repetitions on B5_HSEdge, project 017-24 (EMIR backup). Opacity increased up to tau225GHz ~ 1 after that. Several wind alarms in the middle. Switch to project test at ~01:00 for monitoring. Anomalous refraction evidence in ponting scans. Wind speed raised to 26 m/s at 01:45. Telescope stopped. Bad weather till 05:30.

Juan started at 05:30. Three additional repetitions on B5_HSEdge for 017-24. Then move to project 009-29 (EMIR backup). Opacity is dropping to 0.3-0.4. Atmosphere apparently more stable.

Stefano from 6:00-15:00, Angel from 6:30: Weather conditions improving. Pointing on 0736+017 (weak) then on Mars. At 6:30 swapping to NIKA2. No source available for beam map, post-posed to a later time (on 1226+023). DAQ started at 07:00; bad KIDs: 28, 4, 33 (ar1, 2, 3), sky-illuminated. Pointing on Mars. Software problem with the analysis of the pointing after a couple of tries.: QL doesn't work with run 80. Switching to run 79. DAQ restarted at 08:50; bad KIDs: 32, 2, 34 (ar1, 2, 3). Angel patched it. Pointing (-4.8 41.8) and focus (1.3) on Mars. Strong wind (20 km/s peak), tracking errors (small, +-2" on data, larger, 3-4" peak from Grafana monitor), large apparent homology errors. Calib_1scan. Several tracks to fix homology errors. <AB>: after a JLS's consultation to IR, these large homology errors are only apparent. They are caused by the non-zero lateral focus corrections adopted for NIKA2. Pointing on Mars, then skydip. Weather is borderline for the scientific programs, switched to polarimetry to catch possible problems. DAQ restarted with HPW in the optical path at 10:45 bad KIDs: 31, 3, 34 (ar1, 2, 3). Pointing, focus, and calib1_scan on Mars, then pointing and calib1_scan two strongly polarized sources (0851+202, 0716+714), then again Mars, then 1226+023=3C273 (with focus at 11:58), and 3C286, then closing the NIKA2 session with pointing, focus (at 12:27 and 12:51) and calib1_scan on 1226 again. Opacity is increasing, switching to EMIR at 13:15. Program 085-24 (WSw). Pointing on 1226+023. Problems with E150 tuning. Focus at 14:15 on 1226+023

15:30-23:00; Federico: Started observation with EMIR of proj. 071-24. Done tuning, pointing and focus on K3-50A, then started scientific observation with line calibrator. reference position script not working but already done on September. Continued with OTF maps for beta/lambda directions, subscans 6, and beta direction of subscan 7. Source start declining and low in el (~21deg), changed project to 058-24. Calibration, focus and pointing on NGC7027. Started observation of NOTF8v, but backends not connected properly (~20min lost). Scans cancelled and tuning redone. Continued observation with NOTF8v and NOTF9 (horizontal and vertical). At ~19:30 switched to Nika .