After running an alignment earlier, Sheila suggested I increase the FSS COMM Gain from 26dB to 29dB (Over last couple of days we have gone up from around 23dB up to 26dB due to the RefCav transmission nose-diving after the big Peru EQ).  Unfortunately after I went to this higher gain, I could no longer get past LOCKING_ALS...even when I reduced the gain back to 26 & 25dB. 

At this point I gave Jason a call so he could walk me through what to do to touch up the RefCav alignment.  Starting at about 1.77V, I was able to take a decent step up to around 1.84V, but after that I just could not get any big improvements...I might have max-ed at about 1.87V...but this is still pretty horrible since this should be up around 4V (and this was with me spending atleast 90min trying to touch up the alignment. (a few hours of the transmission signal is attached).

I finally decided to give up on this and move on. 

The FSS COMM Gain was at 25dB (1dB lower than at the beginning of the shift); I was hesitant to go to 26dB or higher due to the difficulties in getting past LOCKING_ALS earlier. 

LOCKING:

One attempt broke lock at ACQUIRE DRMI.

Current attempt maid it to OFFLOAD_DRMI_ASC...but I really had to watch it toward the end of this step because the last few steps of this state would drive POP18 down & make PRC Gain noisier---I literally had to tweak SRM in Yaw quickly to keep the alignment from being driven off and breaking lock.  Have optimized alignment best I can here at DRMI, and have hung out at OFFLOAD DRMI for about 10min (to make sure everything looks calm & flat before moving on)....Will move on and see what happens.

[And I need a break, so will be making lunch soon.]