On Daniel's suggestion, I have made some projections for how we can expect the interferometer range to improve if we double the power and/or fix the low-frequency power-law noise.

The first attachment shows various projected curves at the current power (23 W), and the second attachment shows projected curves at twice the power. The ranges are computed using Salvo and John M's new version of int73.

I've assumed the unknown noise has an ASD of 1×10⁻²⁰ m/rtHz at 100 Hz, with a shape of 1/f². This is just done by eye, with the magnitude chosen so that the subtraction does not force the remaining noise to dip significantly below the "total expected" trace.

It seems that either fixing the power-law noise or doubling the power gives similar results for both BNS range (for two 1.4M_⊙ stars) and BBH range (for two 30M_⊙ holes). Doing both gives us a bigger boost.

From the curve in which the power is doubled and the low-frequency noise is fixed, it is apparent (if you believe the subtraction) that there is still some irregular excess noise (perhaps scatter) between 60 and 100 Hz. This actually seems to limit the range significantly; looking at the red traces, the "total expected" trace has ranges of 110 Mpc / 2.1 Gpc, and the "total expected" trace at twice the power has range of 135 Mpc / 2.7 Mpc. Additionally, some of the noise below 50 Hz is LSC control noise, which can be reduced by implementing better subtraction.

(Warner, Drigger, Gray)

Summary:  Beams were not aligned onto PDs for PRM, so we had to touch alignment of PRM, RM1, & RM2

After getting a hand-off from Jim, went through Initial Alignment, just so I could see what he saw.  I made notes as I went:

• Align Arms Using GREEN:
  • First thing:  Took ISC_LOCK from PAUSE -> EXEC.  And also have in DOWN (request)/READY (state)
  • Took ALS's & ALIGN IFO to AUTO (they were Managed)
  • Hard to tell when "control signals converge"....what are these signals & what should they converge to?
  • Went ahead and OFFLOADED GREEN WFS
  • Beatnote was around 3.5dBm....so I tweaked PR3 to get it to 4.6dBm
  • note:  during alignment ALSX would drop out every few minutes
• Input Align
  • Xarm would not lock after 5min.  So did Jenne trick of increasing LSC-XARM_GAIN from 0.05 to 0.15 & locked within a minute & Offloaded while at this gain (is that OK?)
• PRM Align
  • During REFL_WFS_CENTERING_PRX, got:  "REFL WFS DC Centering Railed" briefly & then nothing...stuck here.  Then Guardian would go DOWN & try again.

This is where I called in Jenne for a rescue.  

So from PRM Align, we looked through ASC land and found big inputs on the DC1 & DC2 PDs.  

Then took ISC ALIGN to DOWN, and then only to PRX_LOCKED.  

While here we ultimately moved some optics around to help us get better.  I watched the DC pds and Jenne did the same and also looked at some QPD sum values, while I tweaked on the PRM (mainly).  I also tweaked on the RM1 & RM2 mirrors a little to get the DC1/2 values down to decent values (from 0.9 down below 0.2).  Jenne could clearly see the beam off the QPDs and walked me into a decent spot & I tweaked mirrors to minimize inputs on the DC pds.

Once we liked what we had, Jenne engaged the PRC1 p/y loops by hand, and this improved all the signals we were looking at (note:  she turned OFF the intergrators first [FM2's]...once loops INPUTs were ON, she turned on FM2's again).  At this point everything looked good.  We then went to PRM_ALIGN (which didn't do much, since Jenne did it all by hand).  I then waited and OFFLOADED PRM Alignment.

I also went to DOWN and back to PRM ALIGN to repeat and everything looked good.  

Now continuing with Initial Alignment!

TITLE:  11/14 OWL Shift:  00:00-08:00UTC (16:00-00:00PDT), all times posted in UTC     

STATE of H1:  H1is in ALIGNING state (see Jim's alog for issues here).

Outgoing Operator:  Jim Warner

Support:  Jenne is On-Call commissioner 

Quick Summary:  I've emailed Jenne a heads up I may be employing her help, but will make an attempt to go through Initial Alignment first.  Goal:  Get H1 back to locking after being down for almost 43hrs!

Title: Day Summary Nov 14th,16:00-00:00UTC

State of H1:  Ugh....

Offsite Support:  Jenne on the phone

Shift Summary:  winds and useism kept the IFO down

Details:

Wind and useism were still high when I arrived, ALS wouldn't stay locked. about 22:00 wind had finally calmed down, so I started trying to lock. No flashes at DRMI, so I started initial alignment. Initial alignment would find X arm IR, Jenne was called and turning up the gain on the LSC X-arm loop from .05 to .15 fixed it. PRM_ALIGN is now failing, so Corey will be getting support for that.

No locking so far today. Winds and useism are still high. So far the IFO hasn't made it past Find-IR. And now an earthquake in Japan is shaking us up.

Gracedb had some issues last night, details in Keith's alog Link

Our ext_alert program on h1fescript0 had given up attempting to reconnect due to the long duration of the server outage. This morning I tried restarting ext_alert via a monit restart, but this did not work and I ended up starting it by hand. It should be stable now.

O1 day 57

model restarts logged for Fri 13/Nov/2015 No restarts reported

The landscape crew will begin removing tumbleweeds that have accumulated on the arm access roads. This will involve using the tractor and bailing machine.

I have requested they begin on the X-Arm where the buildup seems to be the greatest.

Title: Ops Owl Summary, 08:00-16:00UTC (00:00-08::00PT)

State of H1:  trying to relock 

Incoming Operator: JimW

Shift Summary:  winds and useism kept the IFO down

Details:

- when I arrived the ETMX ISI was oscillating and that took until about 14:00UTC to "fix" though I don't' know what I did that had a good effect

--- I took the ISI to OFFLINE, then back to FULLY ISOLATED and engaging stage2 thew it into oscillations

--- I had to manually engaged stage2, and was confused by the ISI position not matching the setpoints, and will ask Jim, who's coming in at 8AM

--- I restored all guardian control and sent the ISI back to FULLY ISOLATED, and it went and is currently ok.

Current State:

- average winds at EY and EX and the Corner Station are now above 27mph according to LHO anemometers

- useism is slightly lower in the last 2 hours, end stations around 0.5 and Corner Station around 0.9

- IFO is struggling to get to CHECK IR

as of 14:34UTC X arm in red is locked and alignment is offloaded!

continuing on with the initial alignment.

winds at EX are about 25mph, and increasing.

winds at the Corner Station are about 10mph.

useism is unchanged from 2 hours ago.

ETMX ISI excessive motion seems to be gone for now.

Attached is a plot of the ETMX ISI as Stage2 ISO is engaged when I set guardian to FULLY_ISOLATED.

Winds at EX have returned and are an average of 27mph as of 11:56UTC.

Useism is still 0.6um/s and higher at all buildings.

I tried using guardian to engage stage2 ISO and for these conditions it looks like guardian has very agressive ramp times, so I looked for the ISI guardian that sets the ramp times without success, and engaged the stage2 ISO manually, with very long ramp times and graduated gains, but got the same result as the guardian's - ETMX is oscillating.

Title: Ops Owl Mid-shift report, shift times 08:00-16:00UTC (00:00-08:00PT)

State of H1: unlocked

Shift Summary:  Arriving on site, winds are good, useism is still high but trending down over the last 8 hours, ETMX ISI is oscillating

I'm working on ETMX ISI to stop the oscillations.  So far have taken it to OFFLINE and ran an INIT, and am now working on going back to FULLY_ISOLATED.

This may not work, but maybe it will.

Other than ETMX ISI, no other outstanding issues from heavy winds.

TITLE:  11/14 OWL Shift:  00:00-08:00UTC (16:00-00:00PDT), all times posted in UTC     

STATE of H1:  High winds continue (now averaging about 30mph).  LVEA useism is at 1.0um/s.  For locking, we need winds below 20mph and useism down to 0.7um/s.

Incoming Operator:  Cheryl Monitoring From Home

Support:  Talked with Mike on the phone.  Nutsinee was also here.

Quick Summary: 

Shift was awash, with no locking attempts at all due to high seismic activity which has been going on 24+hrs!  I have occupied an FOM screen (nuc0 & it can be view here) so Cheryl can monitor seismicity & ALS locking from home.  If the winds ever calm down during her shift, she will come in.  

Activities:

• Topped of Crystal Chiller
• 2:15 Nutsinee out of LVEA for HWS work
• Nutsinee noticed tripped TCS-X laser.  Talking with Mike/Alastair about fix
• 2:20 Taking HAM2, HAM5, & HAM6 ISIs to ISOLATED now that Nutsinee is done.  Mode Cleaner locked.  Waiting for TCSx to get sorted before working on alignment.
• Went out on floor to bring back TCSX (see Nutsinee's alog).
• Guardian was giving low ISS diffracted power, so made an adjustment to REFSIGNAL
• Attempted Initial Alignment but ALS locking not possible due to seismic.  ALS locks would last seconds to a couple of minutes before dropping out.

The first image attached is before the alignment work. The second image is after the alignment this afternoon (not quite there yet but looks much better) and the third image is the return beam with Hartmann plate on. The problem I ran into is that the return sled beam didn't seem to follow the path of the green light (I lost the return beam when I aligned green to the irises). 

Another episode of RF45 glitches came back 5 hours ago (Nov14 00:36 UTC) and still on going.

Alastair, Corey, Nutsinee

First RTD/IR sens. alarm went red on the medm screen. A visual inspection at the controller box showed IR FAULT alarm which couldn't be untripped by simply turn the key back and forth. Before going out to swap the IR sensor box I discovered that the laser had actually stopped working almost two hours before the alarm went off. Meaning, nothing was heating up the viewport at the time IR sensor tripped. We followed Alastair's suggestion (with a permission from Mike) and inspected the viewport from inside the table anyway to make sure there's nothing obvious (eg. bug crawed in and got zapped). While taking down the IR sensor box the sensor happened to untripped itself. So we swapped the DB9 cable and plug it to the spare IR box and left it on the chassis. After the IR fault got untripped we were able to restart the laser.

The cause of CO2X tripped is unclear. There was a sharp drop in power supply but only by a tiny amount (-0.005 V) at the same time that the laser output power, laser temperature, and the current drawn dropped to 0. All these happened almost two hours before IR FAULT alarm went off. The chiller was working fine.

NOISY SEISMIC:  This shift continues to have elevated wind (averaging about 25mph) and useism (Corner Station hovering at 1um/s).  Attached are screen shots of the useism, and the wind for the last 24hrs.  One can view the useism band here.

TCSX LASER BACK:  Nutsinee brought the TCSX laser back & that will probably take something on the order of an hour(s) to heat up ITMx.

INITIAL ALIGNMENT NOT POSSIBLE YET:  Also tried starting an initial alignment.  I was able to get the arms to lock up (Y-arm looked good & X-arm needed some ETMx tweaking), but they only stay locked on the order of seconds and then get bumped around by the wind and drop.  So this will make Initial Alignment tough:  Still too noisy for the arms.

I have all BSC ISIs on 45mHz Blends.