Activity Log: All Times in UTC (PT)

16:00 (08:00) Take over from Jim
16:59 (08:59) Christina & Karen – Going into the mechanical building to deliver supplies
17:25 (09:25) High temp alarm on CS Zone 1B. Will monitor.
17:55 (09:55) Out of Observing to try to improve power recycling gain
18:52 (10:52) Back into Observing mode
19:32 (11:32) Platt Electrical on site with a delivery for Richard
20:50 (12:50) LockLoss – POP_A_LF has been drifting down all morning despite the tweaking of PR2
21:00 (13:00) Start initial alignment and then on to relocking
22:00 (14:00) Travis – Going into the optics lab
22:02 (14:02) GRB Alert – LHO relocking so ignored alert
22:08 (14:08) IFO locked and back into Observing
22:22 (14:22) Travis – Out of the optics lab
22:44 (14:45) Travis – Going into optics lab
22:58 (14:58) Travis – Out of the optics lab
23:10 (15:10) Travis – Going into optics lab
23:15 (15:15) Travis – Out of the optics lab
00:00 (16:00) Turn over to Cheryl
 

End of Shift Summary:

Title:  01/04/2015, Day Shift 16:00 – 00:00 (08:00 – 16:00) All times in UTC (PT)

Support:  Sheila, Jenne, Kiwamu,   
 
Incoming Operator: Cheryl

Shift Detail Summary: Problems with the POP_A_LF plagued the lock all morning. Went out of Observing for about an hour while Sheila and Jenne tweaked PR2. They were able to improve things a bit but it did not last for long. Finally, the recycling power dropped enough to break lock. Did an initial alignment and relocked the IFO. There were no problems with either alignment or relocking. 
   The initial alignment did make some improvements the too POP_A_LF signal. However, the POP_A_LF signal is still a bit ragged; and has been drifting downward since the lock was reestablished. It is now just below the IMC-MC2_TRANS signal.  
   The IFO is locked in Observing mode. Power is good, range is around 79Mpc. In general, environmental conditions continue to be good.   
         

- 79% duty cycle at 75-80 Mpc, overall data looks quite clean

- a few lost locks due to earthquakes

- microseism stayed under 0.5 um/s

- no Omicron triggers for 2nd half of shift

- on Dec 28, ~20 Hz glitches occurred for most of the day, Hveto found ASC-CSOFT_Y_OUT_DQ to be responsible (possible scattering?)

full shift: https://wiki.ligo.org/DetChar/DataQuality/DQShiftLHO20151228

We have enough data now to convince ourselves that the manually set LLCV setting supplying LN2 is nearly matching the boil-off rate 

-> Gerardo over filled CP3 yesterday -> next over fill will be tomorrow, Tuesday Jan. 5th

PSL Status: 
SysStat: All Green, except VB program offline & LRA out of range 
Output power: 30.4w  
Frontend Watch: Green
HPO Watch: Red

PMC:
Locked: 2 days, 22 hours, 52 minutes
Reflected power:    1.6w
Transmitted power: 22.9w 
Total Power:       24.5w 

ISS:
Diffracted power: 8.32%
Last saturation event: 0 days, 1 hours, 11 minutes 

FSS:
Locked: 0 days, 1 hours, 56 minutes
Trans PD: 1.317v

Complete results from this DQ shift may be found here.

• 31 Dec and 1 Jan appeared to be nominal as far as information available on the Summary pages. However, Josh Smith reports RF beats / whistles on the 31st and again for the 2nd. It is possible that whistles, usually not a problem at LHO, are present through the entire shift. See alog.

• A peculiar periodicity in seismic noise in the 1-3 Hz band was seen on 31 Dec. See alog. While it is not known if it is an artifact or real, a similar pattern appeared on 16 Nov as well as other dates where less seismic BLRMS information was available.

• The last lock on 1 Jan was lost due to a PSL problem. See alog. The following day (2Jan) the first lock exhibited excess low frequency noise that seemed strongly correlated with PSL ISS and IMC frequency stability. See alog. While the second lock of that day showed improvement but the influence of PSL and IMC glitches could be seen on the following day (3 Jan).

• 2-3 Jan also showed elevated glitch rates with a large excess at low frequencies on 2 Jan and patterns of glitches at evenly spaced frequencies on both days. A line at about 1500 Hz (second harmonic of the violin mode) was visible on 2 Jan. The second locks on both days showed an increased number of range loss glitches (a.k.a. ETMY saturations).

   Lost lock at 20:50 (12:50) due to the drop in power in POP_A_LF. Did an initial alignment and was able to relock the IFO on the first try. Back in Observing with 21.7W and 78Mpc. 

   The POP_A_LF signal is still a bit ragged and is just above the IMC-MC2_TRANS signal. 

   The IFO remains up and in Observing. Environmental and seismic conditions are favorable. The POP_A_LF_Output continues to be an issue. There was an attempt to tweak PR2 to bring this back up. Some gain on the problem was made but that has faded away. Range continues to suffer (mid 70s to high 60Mpc). Will hope the lock holds.   

   17:55 (09:55) took the IFO to Commissioning mode so Sheila & Jenne could try to improve the power decline apparent in the LSC-POP_A_LF_Output signal. After tweaking PR2 pitch & Yaw, POP_A_LF looks a little better but is still a concern. The investigation into the problem continues. 

   18:52 (10:52) - Put the IFO back into Observing mode. 

J. Kissel, for the CAL Team

I attach a picture of the whiteboard which shows the strawman schedule of activity during calibration week (Jan 5 to Jan 12). This list contains everything mentioned on the End-Of-Run measurement page of the JRPC Wiki that is relevant for LHO, but just organized into a rough schedule. Wish us luck!

P.S. These measurements are covered by WP 5674.

Attached are 2 trends of the FSS RefCav TPD.  The first is a 14 day trend showing the last decay up until the 1-1-2016 lockloss and the subsequent RefCav adjustment.  The second is a 3 day trend detailing what the RefCav TPD has done since we adjusted it on 1-1-2016.  Since the adjustment the TPD has fallen by ~0.2 V to 1.31 V, but has appeared to level out there over the last 24 hours.  As it stands now no adjustment is necessary; 1.31 V on the TPD indicates that there is plenty of light for the ALS system to function correctly (danger zone is ~0.9 V on the TPD).  I will continue to monitor as this could change (but hopefully won't).

Attached are 7-day pitch, yaw, and sum trends for all active H1 optical levers.

This may be a rehash but WP review reminded me.  Re WP 5618

The attached 30 day trends of the three Ground STS2's Mass position shows that they are all out of spec.  The values for these should be something smaller than 5000 counts or 1.5 or 2 volts.  If it can be managed during Tuesday Maintenance without interfering with calibration or other work, I'd like to again try recentering these.  Much easier now given the remote capability.

   No reports from the various groups as all are getting back up to speed after the year end holiday break. 

Planned Tuesday Maintenance: 
(1). Jeff B. - Run dust monitor vacuum plumbing at End-X
(2). Jeff K. - Run End-X calibration
(3). Jeff K. - End-X UIM electronics investigation
(4). Richard - Survey of on site cameras

   Starting after the 01/05/16 Tuesday maintenance, the remaining day shifts (08:00 16:00) during the week will be given to the calibration group. These calibration activities may go beyond 16:00. 

   Starting Thursday 01/07/16 there will commence a regular 08:30 meeting in the control room to review FRS tickets and to plan for the various activities around the site. This will be similar to the Monday meeting but will concentrate on FRS items not work permits.         

  Transition Summary:
Title:  01/4/2016, Day Shift 16:00 – 00:00 (08:00 – 16:00) All times in UTC (PT)
	
State of H1: 16:00 (08:00), The IOF has been in Observing mode for last 3 hours. Range is 74Mpc and power is at 21.8W. Environmental conditions are good. As Jim reported, the slow degradation of power via POP_A_LF may foretell of a lock loss. Will keep an eye on it. 
 
Outgoing Operator: Jim

Title: 1/3 Eve Shift 0:00-8:00 UTC (16:00-24:00 PST).  All times in UTC.

State of H1: Observing

Shift Summary:  Started the shift with an unlocked IFO due to EQ.  After EQ ringdown, aligned and locked IFO.  Since going to Observing, we have been watching the slow degradation of power via POP_A_LF, much like last EVE.  At one point we attempted to reverse the trend by adjusting ETMy pitch, but were thwarted by WFS control loops.

Activity log:

11:30 Lockloss probably from whatever is causing POP to drift down

13:15 Back to observing, shortly thereafte I notice that POP is once again drifting down. No clear cause, environment is quiet, RF45 seems to be behaving, ASC foms etc all look nominal.

14:45 Bubba starts clearing the parking lot. This has a noticeable effect on the IFO.

The ETMy has been slowly sagging over the last few months.  Recently, the sag rate has increased.  While the temperature control at EY appears to be noisier during this December's cold spell, the overall temp has not changed by a large (greater than a deg C) amount, so I doubt that is the full cause of the drift.  However, there have been a few pressure changes that the ETMy chamber has witnessed, according to the VE pressure channels I picked off and plotted (attached).  I can't correlate all of the vertical motion humps exactly to these pressure steps, but the direction is correct: lower pressure means a a lower QUAD - that said, the sag usually happens much faster than weeks when the pressure or temp is changed, so wt-heck?.  The most recent step in pressure shown on the plot was Dec 11th when the VE crew was doing some work on an IP bakeout at Y2-8.  I'll poke them to see what the nature of the pressure step is.  I worry a bit that there is something wrong with the channel after the step feature since it goes very quiet past that point.

The corresponding ETMy pitch motion change is much more subtle, which is good from an alignment standpoint.  The BOSEMs still have plenty of signal, so we shouldn't have any issues with drive due to this drift.

Another day, another mystery.  Keep H1 weird.

Just because...

While watching the IFO come back up, it was noticed that the live trend of ISS Diffracted Power was wiggling alot like the live trends of POP_A and IMC_TRANS.  Attached is a trend for the curious.