Update: Early Release due to Adverse Weather Conditions (Staggered Release)

									Station# 12  (WYEB) at 550 ft above MSL     

 Time: 15:30:00 PST      Date: 1/10/2017

 Ave Wind Direction = 316
 Ave Wind Speed     =  15
 Max Wind Speed     =  21
                         Celsius
 Ave Temp = 25.9          -3.42
 Max Temp = 26.0          -3.31
 Min Temp = 25.4          -3.64

 Wind Chill  =  13.8

 Rain Gauge = 0.00

GRB alert at 23:13 UTC.  Begin 1 hour standdown.

After Maintenance Day ended at noon, we struggled for a bit to recover arm alignment to get past ALS locking.  Although the stability of the green arm locking was a bit questionable, JeffK, Jenne, and I decided to move on through IA.  After completing IA, we have finally made it to NLN as of 22:35 UTC.

Suspect Y2-8 ion pump is not working properly. There was a pressure rise in Y-arm on Saturday, Jan. 7th at around 11:30 am local time. Attached is y-arm pressure trends. Purple curve for PT427, located at Y2-8 (250 m down from EY), shows the sharpest increase. We will investigate the controller located in EY mech. room after snow is cleared. Bubba and John couldn't get past warehouse today in truck.

References on faulty HV cable:

aLOG 28857

aLOG 28847

aLOG 28818

IP5 controller (corner station) failed 6.5 hrs prior on Jan. 7th coincidentally.

I went through the checklist and didn't find anything too out of place or worrysome. The two things that I thought worth mentioning are:

• The double doors to the East of the PSL enclosure do not seem to close all the way. I didn't want to put too much force into it, but it barely wouldn't catch.
• In the North Bay along the East wall there are a some double doors left open with some cables that are passed between the door and the door frame so it cannot close. Within these doors there is an open electrical box with some wires hanging out, and on the floor leaned up against the wall is a rack computer that is running. This seems like something that is a WIP but after I asked Fil he said it has been that way for a very long time. Attached picture.

J. Kissel

Your weekly charge measurement update from H1: ETMX and ETMY ESD systems are showing little-to-no effective bias voltage from accumulated charge. 

Recall we're flipping the bias voltage whenever the given test mass is not in use (i.e. ETMY flipped when DOWN [since 2016 Nov 28, see LHO aLOG 31929], and ETMX flipped when in nominal low noise [since 2016 Nov 03, see LHO aLOG 31172]). Since the regular flipping began, and our duty cycle has been consistently around 50%, we're keeping all quadrants below +/-10 [V] effective bias voltage, which is a small fraction of the requested bias voltage (~400 [V]), which means the actuation strength is changing at the sub-percent level, and is consistent with the uncertainty of the measurement.

We should confirm this by comparing against longitudinal actuation strength, a. la. LHO aLOG 24241.

WP 6428

This morning the CO2 Laser Interlock Chassis D1200745 was replaced. This work is part of the ongoing investigation of the TCS flow sensor alarms/glitches. See alog 32776. Verified trip point for the temperature shutoff of the laser on new chassis. Steps taken to replace chassis:

1. Turn off laser at key
2. Turn off chiller in mechanical room
3. Turn off chassis and unplug all connections
4. Install new chassis, rocker switch set to CW (OPS) position
5. Redo connections to chassis & power on
6. Turn on chiller
7. Check there are no red lights on chassis front panel
8. Key on laser and press gate button
9. Check laser power actually powers on (MEDM screen).

Old Chassis S1302125
New Chassis S1302122

Fil, Richard, Nutsinee, Alastair

FAMIS#4709

I couldnt get the data via the script so I had to get second trends "by hand" in dataviewer. Barbaric.

ETMY Pit is at -12

ETMY Yaw is at -8

ETMX Pit is approaching -10

Krishna

I have modified the C# code in BRS Beckhoff computers used for the angle readout. The code is used to fit the cross-correlation of the patterns in the CCD to infer the position change (=angle) of the patterns. The code used to have a manually adjusted fit parameter. This was unsatisfactory and produced errors in the fit as the beam-balance position changed over time or it's amplitude grew. The noise level in the angle would vary from ~0.2 nrad/rt(Hz) to ~0.4 nrad/rt(Hz). We came up with a better routine than can extract this parameter from the data and use it to correct the fit producing superior results as shown in the attachment. The noise level should now stay below 0.2 nrad/rt(Hz).

The code for both BRS' has been updated.

This should allow us to set higher thresholds for BRSX damper, which will help with the problem in 33028. However, it would still be a good idea for the operator or anyone else to keep the BRSX amplitude small by damping it, whenever we are not observing.

Other updates

I cleared the encoder_value_save.txt file for BRSX, by deleting all characters inside. I suspect the large number of ascii values there were caused by interruption of the ethercat communication to the Beckhoff Motor Controller, likely due to lose wires. The evidence for this is the two drops in the BRSX_BOXBIT in November. It hasn't happened since, but it would be good to investigate it when convenient. After clearing the file, I restarted the computer, restarted the PLC and zeroed the encoder position. After modifying the C# code and restarting it, the damper seemed fine. We'll keep an eye on this.

For BRSY, I noticed a couple of problems with the Diagnostic C# code, which we use when we have to change the centering of the beam-balance. First was that Visual Studio asked me to log in with a Microsoft account id. I created a new one, since I couldn't remember what the old one was. This info will be added to the BRS troubleshooting guide on the DCC to prevent this problem in the future. Second, the C# code would freeze after 11 seconds for no obvious reason. I restarted the Beckhoff computer, after which it worked fine. I wanted to make a note of this here to prevent future surprises.

After consulting with John W. and Bubba G., Jim W. and I decided to postpone the spare seismometer test at BRSY due to the poor road conditions. I'll leave the table with Jim and he will install it at the next available opportunity

WP 6418

After moving minute trend files from h1tw1's SSD RAID, I modified the daqdrc file and restarted daqd on h1nds1 to read the old minute trends from /frames.

The alignment into the reference cavity was tweaked. Transmission signal went
from ~1.6 to ~3.5.  Mostly pitch adjustment on the periscope.

6.4M Kirakira, Solomon Islands

Was it reported by Terramon, USGS, SEISMON? Yes, Yes, No

Magnitude (according to Terramon, USGS, SEISMON): 6.4, 6.4, NA

Location: 108km WNW of Kirakira, Solomon Islands; LAT: -10.2, LON: 161.1

Starting time of event (ie. when BLRMS started to increase on DMT on the wall): ~15:50 UTC

Lock status? Caused lockloss.

EQ reported by Terramon BEFORE it actually arrived? It arrived before my shift started, so not sure.

TITLE: 01/10 Day Shift: 16:00-00:00 UTC (08:00-16:00 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Earthquake
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Jim
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    Wind: 11mph Gusts, 9mph 5min avg
    Primary useism: 0.39 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.38 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:  Currently Down due to EQ in Solomon Islands that arrived just as shift was starting.
 

TITLE: 01/10 Owl Shift: 08:00-16:00 UTC (00:00-08:00 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: EQ, maintenance day
INCOMING OPERATOR: Nutsinee?
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    Wind: 11mph Gusts, 10mph 5min avg
    Primary useism: 0.24 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.41 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:

I had problems with PI modes 27 & 28 all night, they needed constant attention. 27 broke lock once, and when I got back up, looking at spectra showed that the modes that were ringing up were outside the mode 27 bandpass filter, so I switched from FM5 (18036.5 hz) to FM4(18040 hz), and could at least control the PI for the rest of the night, but it needed frequent tweaks to the PLL phase.

Maintenance has started, Peter headed out to the PSL after an EQ knocked us out, Krishna has started a software upgrade to the BRSs.
 

TITLE: 01/10 Eve Shift: 00:00-08:00 UTC (16:00-00:00 PST), all times posted in UTC

• 4:37 TCSy Chiller Low
• 5:25-6:15 IP5 work in Mechanical Room (Gerardo)
• 6:37 Lockloss due to Phillipines EQ
• 6:40 Took ISIs to LARGE_EQ_NOBRSXY
• 7:12 ISIs to WINDY
• 7:42 finally able to get past LOCKING ALS.  Aligned BS in CHECK MICH FRINGES, but PRMI looked dead/misaligned---Tweaked PRM in yaw and had flashes....but handing off to Jim and he's going for an Initial Alignment.
• 8:03 GRB Acknowledged.  H1 & L1 out due to the EQ.  Talked with William P and it sounded like they still had lots of noise preventing locking.

On Kissel's suggestion, flagging H1 data from 23:45-1:25UTC, due to snow plowing (by Bubba).  This is for CP2 access for LN2 delivery Tues morning.  Activity could be seen in our 3-10 & 10-30Hz bands.  This brought H1 range down below 50Mpc at times during this period.  Drifts were several feet high & it took him almost 2hrs just to plow just this short section.