Transition Summary:
Title:  12/31/2015, Evening Shift 00:00 – 08:00 (16:00 – 00:00) All times in UTC (PT)
	
State of H1: 00:00 (16:00), IFO in Observing mode for 7 hours. Power is 21.8W and range is 79Mpc.   The wind at the site is a light to gentle breeze (4 - 12mph). Seismic 0.03-0.1Hz band showed a bit of excitation for about 4 hours in the End-Y channel, which has subsided. Microseism remains flat at 0.4um/s.      

Outgoing Operator: Corey

TITLE:  12/31 DAY Shift:  16:00-00:00UTC (08:00-04:00PDT), all times posted in UTC     

STATE of H1:   Locked for 6+hrs at or under 80Mpc.

Incoming Operator:   Jeff B.

Support:  Kiwamu called in for OWL & DAY

Quick Summary:

After Kiwamu fought the fight early this morning, H1 has been in Observing ever since (even with a few notable [red Terramon] rumblers).  Will be curious to see how H1 fares during its next Initial Alignment (see note for possible work-around for Input Align portion of Initial Alignment from Kiwamu's alog earlier).

There was warning (albeit after-the-fact) of another EQ at 22:40 from Alaska with motion of 0.6um/s, but it had no effect here.

• ETMy Saturations:  17:11, 17:44, 21:12, 21:14
• 16:30 GRB Alert (we are down, and chatted with William at LLO)
• 17:10 Observing
• 17:18 (2) GRB Alerts at same time (from Swift & Fermi.  Confirmed with William at LLO)
• 23:01 - 23:32 Kyle at Ymid for CP3 fill

~1505 hrs. local 

Looks like a 5.4 New Zealand quake is a few minutes (22:18utc/218pmPST) from approaching with 0.5um/s motion.  We'll see how we fair.

• Noticing possibly something with ASC signals (oddness on the video0 StripTool).  Investigating now.
• Clean-looking H1 (just under 80Mpc).  
• Blends:  45mHz for all except Quite_90's for ETMx's Y & ETMy's X.
• LVEA useism is around 0.4um/s & winds are low.

Noticed on our Seismic FOMs that some of the 1-3Hz seismic BLRMS trends took a step up at midnight last night (~8:03UTC today).  I went ahead and looked at all the bands & axis of the EX/EY/LVEA seismometers and only found this jump on (3) trends for 1-3Hz:  LVEA_X, LVEA_Z, & EY_Y. 

Attached are trends of 1-3Hz for the last 24hrs.

  (Ed, Kiwamu),

Ed in this morning noticed that INPUT_ALIGN did not work. The cause is still UNKNOWN; It is NOT FIXED yet.

Symptom: the IR laser does not lock to the X arm in INPUT_ALIGN.

If you happen to do INPUT_ALIGN and come across the same issue, please consider doing the workaround written below.

A workaroud (temporary, manual and painful):

• Request INPUT_ALIGN (although we assume that it is not going to lock).
• Open the camera monitor of the AS port (or the one on the front TV screen in the control room),
• Adjust the exposure time of the camera to something small, for example 36000 so that you don't miss a fast passage of fringes.
• When the arm passes a resonance, the beam spot on the camera blinks. During this short blink, it shows a higher order mode (it may appear as a lateral shift of the beam spot depending on misalignment).
• Using the information of the higher-order mode, move IM4 and PR2 in angle to improve the higher order modes.
  • If the alignment is perfect,the beam just blinks without any higher-order-modes or lateral shift.
• Once you get a satisfactory in the above process, check how high LSC-TR_X_NORM is. If it occasionally reaches 1, we are done. If not, keep improving the alignment.

What I tried (none of them worked):

I spent a couple of hours investigating the issue, but I could not identify or fix the issue. And I was never able to lock the laser the X arm. The below is a list of what I tried.

• Different gain settings in LSC-XARM from 0.01 to 10. By the way, the nominal is 0.05.
  • When the gain was at around 0.4, it consistently started catching fringes but for a very very short duration of about 0.1 sec seemingly with a gain peaking oscillation.
• The opposite control sign.
• Different combination of the whitening filters
  • We normally use whitening filters 1 and 2. I tried a combination of 1 and 3, and also 2 and 3.
• A different coil drive whitening.
  • I tried state 2 in MC2 M2 stage which occasionally saturated due the lock transient.
• Fine adjustment of dark offset in ASAIR_A
• Different trigger settings, different filter-trigger settings and etc.

Per Operator Shift Checksheet activity for Thursday Task, I topped off the chiller by adding 175mL of water (this was before we took H1 to Observing).

TITLE:  12/31 DAY Shift:  16:00-00:00UTC (08:00-04:00PDT), all times posted in UTC     

STATE of H1:   Down & alignment/locking investigation by Kiwamu

Outgoing Operator:  Ed

Quick Summary:

Kiwamu & Ed ran into issues with the INPUT ALIGN section of the Initial Alignment.  Kiwamu mentioned it could be related to the AS_Air photodiode.  (Even though we can't get to INPUT ALIGN, the AS Air spot looks nice [no higher order modes or jumps when flashing AND the IR Xarm flashes have been up to 1.0---so, it looks good...but no INPUT ALIGN).  Current plan is to skip the INPUT ALIGN section of Alignment and try locking.

Additional Notes:

1)  And if you are familiar with Initial Alignment issues of late, you will remember that lately we have been skipping the Dark Michelson portion of Initial Alignment....and this state also uses AS_Air.  So this sounds suspicious....

BUT, 

2)  SRC state of Initial Alignment also uses the AS_Air PD, and we were able to get SRC with no problem.  Suspicious indeed!

Currently waiting for DRMI to lock.

I have incremented the XEND heater HC3 from 13.0 to 13.5 ma. The VEA temperature had fallen a little overnight.

TITLE: Dec 30 OWL Shift 08:00-16:00UTC (00:00-08:00 PDT), all times posted in UTC

STATE Of H1: Uknown

SUPPORT: Kiwamu

INCOMING OPERATOR: Corey

SHIFT SUMMARY: After the quake recovery, which didn’t take long. The IFO was in need of some initial alignment. I never got past INPUT_ALIGN. THe X-Arm would not lock in IR. After trying many things and  a long telephone call with Kiwamu, he decided to come in. The spot looked a little pitchy in the PR2 and IM4 dept. Also SR2 has moved 17µrad in Pitch causing the spot to be higher than usual on the AS_AIR camera. YAW on that same optic was restored. Kiwamu is still working on the problem.

11:27UTC

5.7

1. (cont.)...and here it is. There went a 22+hr lock. 
2. 5.768km S of Masachapa, Nicaragua2015-12-31 10:57:00 UTC36.5 km

36.5 km

11:20UTC IFO locked at 68 Mpc. In other news....5.7 in Nicaraugua is rolling us which is why the range is down. 2.63µm R-Wave expected to roll through here right about now. Fingers crossed. Preparing the lockloss log. :/

TITLE: Dec 31 OWL Shift 08:00-16:00UTC (00:00-08:00 PDT), all times posted in UTC

STATE Of H1: Observing

OUTGOING OPERATOR: Jeff

QUICK SUMMARY: IFO and environment look to be all in very good shape.

Activity Log: All Times in UTC (PT)

00:00 (16:00) Take over from Corey
08:00 (00:00) Turn over to Ed


End of Shift Summary:

Title: 12/30/2015, Evening Shift 00:00 – 08:00 (16:00 – 00:00) All times in UTC (PT)

Support:  Vinnie, 
 
Incoming Operator: Ed

Shift Detail Summary: Full shift of Observing mode with no apparent problems. We have been in Observing mode for the past 18 plus hours. There were a couple of ETM-Y saturations. The environmental and seismic conditions were quiet all shift. 

The timing error on H1OAF is still there but it has not gotten any worse.  

   First half of the shift has been undisturbed Observing, with the IFO locked for the past 14.75 hours. Power and range remain at 21.8W and ~80Mpc respectively. The wind is up a little (calm to a gentle breeze (0-7mph)) but of no real concern. Forecast for the next 36 hours does not show much change over these conditions. The seismic and microseism slopes continue flat and within upper/lower limits. 

   The timing error on H1OAF has not exceeded the 63uS level. Will continue to monitor; per Dave B. will not address it unless we go out of Observing or it gets worse.