TITLE: Dec 28 OWL Shift 08:00-16:00UTC (00:00-08:00 PDT), all times posted in UTC

STATE Of H1: Observing @ 82Mpc

SUPPORT: N/A

INCOMING OPERATOR: Cheryl

SHIFT SUMMARY: Great night! IFO locked for 32 hours at ≈81Mpc. One small earthquake cause things to wiggle a bit up to .1µm/s. µSei is still hovering ≤ 90th percentile. Winds are calm. Mike called to check in. It’s snowing. Handing off to Cheryl.

Mid-SHIFT SUMMARY: IFO locked for 28 hours at 81Mpc (82.4Mpc max). Environmental conditions are the same as shift transition.  One small glitch at ≈ 11:45UTC that caused a drop in range of ≈ 10Mpc. No saturations. LLO still down.

TITLE: Dec 28 OWL Shift 08:00-16:00UTC (00:00-08:00 PDT), all times posted in UTC

STATE Of H1: Observing

OUTGOING OPERATOR: Jim

QUICK SUMMARY: IFO has been locked in the 80Mpc range for ≈ 24.5 hours. Seismic conditions in the EQ bands are back to nominal after some small activity and µSei is ≤ 90th percentile. Wind is ≤5mph. ISI blends are all 45mHz in the corner and all 90mHz at the ends except for ETMY on axis. Livingston is down due to high µSeism.

Title: 12/27 Eve Shift 0:00-8:00 UTC

State of H1: Observing

Shift Summary: Quiet shift, range has been somewhat less steady than other times, but no obvious  reason for it

Activity log:

5:45 Kyle to MY to work on CP3, done 6:00

This was a very quiet and uneventful shift. Spectrum looked good all night except for a few saturations at EY. The range was a but drifty, going down to the low 70Mpc's at times and then returning for no apparent reason. Spectra of auxiliary DOFs and RF45 stayed right on the reference curves. Omicron recorded 2-4 loud triggers per hour. In last half hour of shift we had elevated seismic due to nearly concurrent smaller earthquakes in Martinique and Alaska. This seemed to excite Dhard a bit but no noticeable effect on the range.

2150 hrs. local 

Overfilled CP3 manually -> I prefer the new procedure of opening the LLCV bypass valve 1/2 turn ccw then partially opening the exhaust check valve bypass valve to minimize back pressure.  Once LN2 is observed flowing out of the exhaust (~2 minutes), closing the LLCV bypass valve then closing the exhaust check valve bypass valve - in that order.  This should reduce the maximum exhaust pressure.

NOTE:  I did not open the instrument air pressure regulator bowl drain to check for dryness tonight, i.e. change the air pressure at the CDS controlled solenoid valve but nevertheless, the CDS MEDM "START/enable STOP/disable" indicator went from green to red again and I had to re-enabled it - why?  Manually filling the 80K pump using the above method only changes the 80K pump exhaust pressure and should have no effect on the instrument air. 

Gerardo is scheduled to do the next CP3 overfill exercise sometime before 5:00 p.m. hrs. local tomorrow, Monday.

Another quiet shift. Microseism and wind are both low, RF45 has been quiet. Range had been drifting down to about 70 Mpc when I came in, but seems to have at least stabilized or even come back up a little. Lock has lasted about 21 hours.

Title: 12/27 Day Shift 16:00-24:00 UTC (8:00-16:00 PST).  All times in UTC.

State of H1: Observing

Shift Summary: In Observing for my entire shift and 16 hours total now.  No issues related to observation this shift.  Microseism ~0.4 um/s and wind ~7 mph.

Incoming operator: Jim

Activity log:

23:30 Contacted Dave regarding NDS1 issues.

22:37 Dave called back reporting he had restarted NDS1 and it should be back up and running. Did a quick trend of H1 range for 2 days as a check of access to old data.  Worked fine.

With only a few ETMY Saturations not associated with the RF45, the shift has relatively little to remark on in data quality.  The wind has lumped up a couple times but never more than 10 mph or so.  The useism after trending down for a day has swung back up and again maybe peaked, running at ~.3um/sec.  Barker the restarted the nds1 machine after it died.

the daqd process on h1nds1 stopped running at 14:51 PST, log file details shown below. Looking back I see many of these "NDS failed" messages from the 12/24 21:14 evening restart (following the computer freeze up). I restarted the daqd process and then stopped and started the nds process. If we are having any problems getting archived data, we could try rebooting the machine.

[Sun Dec 27 14:51:07 2015] read(seq_num) from NDS failed; errno=0

[Sun Dec 27 14:51:07 2015] connection closed on fd=186

[Sun Dec 27 14:51:09 2015] read(seq_num) from NDS failed; errno=0

[Sun Dec 27 14:51:09 2015] connection on fd 144 closed

[Sun Dec 27 14:51:09 2015] connection closed on fd=226

[Sun Dec 27 14:51:09 2015] connection on fd 110 closed

Observing for the past 12 hours.  Microseism and wind are both up a bit, but still at manageable levels.  There is a dusting of ~1/2 inch of snow on site.

I won't be able to come in during the afternoon today so I did a fill this morning (~0720 hrs. local) and will back tonight ~2200 hours or so.  


Pressure step (~0100 hrs. local) depicted in attached shows up on Y-arm gauges but no indication that IP9 is responsible.  

Title: 12/27 Owl Shift 08:00-16:00 UTC (00:00-08:00 PST).  All times in UTC.

State of H1: Observing at 80 Mpc for 8 hours.

Shift Summary: Another very quiet shift. Useism is trending up and reaching 90th percentile. Almost 0 wind.

Incoming operator: Travis

Activity:

15:14 Kyle called letting me know that he's driving down to EY to check on something.

15:38 Kyle called that he's back in the corner station

It's been a quiet shift. Omicron looks clean. Useism is trending upward. Wind ~15mph. We have been observing since 4.5 hours ago.

A note on a weird seismic behavior: This is the thrid night that I've noticed a big bumb in seismic activity at 3-10 Hz that doesn't correspond to high traffic time. The attached plots are the 3-10 Hz BLRMS from the summary page from Dec 25-27. On the 25th the peaks seems random starting at 6:00 UTC and ends at 14:00 UTC. But on the 26th and 27th the peaks are at ~10:30 UTC (2:30 in the morning local time!). And only the corner station sensors are seeing it. Unlike the noise from local traffic that usually shows up everywhere in the 1-3 Hz band. I don't really see this behavior prior to Dec 25 (usually the 3-10 Hz ground motion comes with the 1-3Hz motion). We have been having low wind over the past three days (below 10mph on Dec 25-26 and below 20mph on Dec27 until the time of this alog was posted). I can't say for sure that we suffer any range drop from it on Dec26-27 but the time when the seismic bumb appeared and disapeared almost coincided with the time that nasty glitches started and ended on Dec25 (which was not all caused by RF45. See alog24466 and alog24477). The h(t) spectrogram from Dec26-27 shows some excess noise just below 10Hz when the bumb occured. Anyway... I just found this behavior interesting and wanted to point it out.

TITLE:    Dec 26 EVE Shift 00:00-08:00UTC

STATE Of H1: Observing

SUPPORT:GregM

SHIFT SUMMARY: Quiet shift. Lost lock, be re-locking was easy. LSC started drifting for a couple hours before the loss, but nothing else looked bad.

ACTIVITY LOG:

0:30 Dale brough a large tour into the CR. They behaved themselves.

5:00 LSC-POP started a slow trend down, not sure what the cause was. Alignment drift?

6:30 Lockloss, LSC-POP continued its downward drift, then RF90 started going limp, then lockloss. I attach lockloss plots, but I think this started an hour or two before.

6:45 I start an initial alignment because ALS-Y won't lock. I had to touch TMSY some, but only small tweaks.

8:00 Back to observing.

Quiet shift. Microseism continues trending down, winds are moderate at ~10 mph. The current lock has survived 25 hours now.

Since the fourth Friday of the month in December fell on Christmas day, the second LHO Dec. public tour occurred today, 12/26/15.  Arrival time at LSB = 2:30 - 3:15 PM.  Departure time = 5:00 - 5:40 PM.  Group size = ~80 adults & kids.  Vehicles at the LSB = ~30 passenger cars.  The group was on the overpass near 4:15 PM and in the control room from about 4:30 to 5:00.  

Title: 12/26 Day Shift 16:00-24:00 UTC (8:00-16:00 PST).  All times in UTC.

State of H1: Observing

Shift Summary: In Observing for my entire shift and 20.5 hours total now.  No issues this shift.  Very quiet wind and seismic. 

Incoming operator: Jim

Activity log:

21:30 Kyle on site for CP3 maintenance

21:41 Kyle starts his drive to CP3

22:30 Kyle done at MY

22:46 ~12 cars to LSB for afternoon tour

23:05 CW injection running alarm

23:22 CW injection inactive alarm

What a difference 24 hours make.  The wind has remained below 10mph and the useism continues to trend down now at 0.6um/sec on average.  There have been no audibles for saturations and the range trace is very lovely.  Best to all-H