[Cheryl, Joe, Giacomo]

First thing today, we relived the yaw offset on PRM. As a fiducial, we placed an iris in the rejected beam, at the edge of th table before it goes into HAM1. We then gradually remove the yaw offset from PRM and rotated the cage to keep the beam centered on the iris. After re-clamping the cage, our best estimate of the centering of the beam is with yaw = +50 (pitch is still +2000).

We also directed the parking beam through its baffle on top of HAM2. This required adjusting the position of the baffle slightly (pushing it towards the center of the viewport by ~1/4"). Parking values are yaw = -6000 and pitch = +2500. With this settings, the beam hits comfortably the parking mirror.

We also:

• adjusted the AOE2 baffle (in front of IM4) so that both the main beam and the parking beam clear it.
• insert an half wave plate in the FI and routed the forward rejected beam into its beam dump
• checked rough centering of the IMC beam on MC1/2/3 (as a sanity check)

Attached are plots of dust counts > .3 microns and > .5 microns in particles per cubic foot requested from 5 PM March 26 to 5 PM March 27. Also attached are plots of the modes to show when they were running/acquiring data.

Data was taken from h1nds1.
T0=13-03-27-00-00-00; Length=86400 (s)
1440.0 minutes of trend displayed

Starting a round of matlab transfer functions overnight for the beamsplitter.

Our first complete look at the BS position told us we were 4.6mm south (-X), 2.3mm west (+Y) of nominal.  Elevation is <0.1mm away from nominal.

Seismic is in the middle of correcting this and we are in an intermediate state.  Will continue in the morning.

- Pablo and Michael, Pcal assembly work inside the "assembly" room in the LVEA.
- Apollo crew craned several items over XBM.
- Filiberto and Sheila, Removal of frequency discriminator at Y-End.
- Sheila, install frequency discriminator at Y-End.
- Michael R., is working on bringing the H1 PSL back, unknown cause as to why it failed, Michael is investigating now and trying to bring it back, as of now he continues to work inside the H1 PSL room.

Late yesterday I had a conversation about PCal crates with Rick: he is planning on sorting things with me Thursday-Friday of this week.

The "shortie" OpLev piers were moved to the VEA of X Mid. I spent a majority of the day working on documenting (drawings, ICS updates), marking and sealing these crates. Specific details below. I worked documentation and marking on the two Giraffes already at X Mid and started documentation of the leaners and the periscope.

Shortie OpLev Piers and Base Plates
3 x D1000452 + 3 x D1000434
2 x D1001301 + 4 x D1000434
3 x D1001854 + 3 x D1000434

In addition, I started to work documentation for baffles.

- Joe, Giacomo, Cheryl, Keita

Tonight we started by revisiting the retro-reflected beam between PR3 and PRM.  We used fringes to tweak the alignmet of the second reflection from the PRM to be aligned to the transmitted beam at PR2, which we estimated to be good to the beam radius of 6mm.  PRM was estimated to be aligned to within 0.1mrads in pitch and yaw.

Good PRM alignment is:
pitch = +2000 on the slider
yaw = -4000 on the slider

With this alignment of PRM, the REFL beam clears all apertures and goes to HAM1!

REFL to it's parking spot out of the top viewport is not reachable.  Full bias in yaw, meaning we are saturating the output, gets the beam fully onto the steering mirror and onto the SiC baffle, but there is not enough drive to get the beam through the baffle aperture.  PRM  is at -4000 in it's a aligned position, and we had to drive it farther from zero to get the beam on the steering mirror, and saturated at -7800 on the slider.

REFL can reach the SiC baffle but not the aperture position is
pitch = +3000 on the slider
yaw = -7800 on the slider

Our suggestion is that we relieve/recenter yaw for the PRM at some point, so we can reach the baffle aperure, but that it's not necessary to do this immediately. 

For IO, Alignment checks and power measurements continue in HAM2 tomorrow.

There is a steering mirror in HAM2 for Keita to use to set up the green beam for HAM3 alignment.

It looks like the phase frequency discriminator in the Y end remote rack used for the fiber laser lock was damaged during the power sequencing problems yesterday.  The output doesn't go negative, even when the signal frequency is lower than the LO frequency.  Maybe it lost its negative rail.  I tried to take it out of the rack to bring into the shop but I couldn't find a screwdriver to get the power cables out at the Y end, so I will go back for it in the morning.  

Sheila

Attached are plots of dust counts > .3 microns and > .5 microns in particles per cubic foot requested from 5 PM March 25 to 5 PM March 26. Also attached are plots of the modes to show when they were running/acquiring data.

Data was taken from h1nds1.
T0=13-03-26-00-00-00; Length=86400 (s)
1440.0 minutes of trend displayed

The out-of-loop PD for the PSL intensity stabilization (H1:PSL-ISS_PDA_OUT_DQ) was used to produce the fake strain channel during engineering run 3 in February. It was very clean overall, but there were a lot of low-frequency glitches. The glitches are all short and below about 55 Hz, and there seem to be more in the 10-25 Hz range. The glitches are every few seconds, not regular, but the rate was pretty much constant during the day. These glitches are still there in recent data. Robert Schofield told me that this frequency range isn't environmental but is likely to be electronic. The glitches are also seen in QPD_DX and QPD_DY.

If we can help diagnose this, don't hesitate to contact detchar@ligo.org and andrew.lundgren@ligo.org.

The attached plots are:
1. A typical day of ER3 as seen by Omicron (the replacement for the OmegaOnline web reports).
2. A similar plot for 5 minutes of recent (last weekend) data.
3. As above, but QPD_DX.
4. As above, but QPD_DY.
5. A selection of 2-second spectra, showing the instability.

Chris, Daniel, Patrick

In short: Swapping the real time Ethernet card in the h1ecatc1 computer appears to have resolved a problem with it periodically crashing and restarting.


Last week and possibly the week before, the computer running the EtherCAT system at the corner station, h1ecatc1, had been spontaneously crashing and restarting. Each time this occurred there was a message upon login that Windows had recovered from an unexpected error.

My first inclination was that one of the installed programs, OpenOffice.org, which periodically asked for Java updates, was causing the problem. To this end I removed this application. I also removed some others that I can not recall at this time. However, the problem persisted.

Looking at the Windows minidump file, it appeared that the issue was with one of the TwinCAT processes. The system manager was also reporting CRC errors and lost frames. I attempted to narrow down the problem by systematically disconnecting EtherCAT chassis. I removed the fiber connected to the test setup of end X in the MSR. This fiber was broken on one end, and I destroyed it. I also disconnected the fiber to end Y. I tried various combinations of the remaining chassis in the H1 electronics room. At one point suspecting the ISC Common Chassis, I swapped it with one from H2. While it may have appeared at one point that things were running better with fewer chassis attached, the problem eventually returned.

I also tested the fiber connection from the MSR to the H1 electronics room. I removed the fiber connection from the ISC Common Chassis in the H1 electronics room and attached it to a communications tester that Daniel had made. With this setup, the h1ecatc1 computer was connected to the Corner MSR Chassis and this was connected by the existing fiber to the communications tester. This appeared to work. Nevertheless, the problem persisted after reconnecting to the chassis. However, it was realized that the orange multi mode fiber patches from the Beckhoff chassis in the MSR and H1 electronics room did not match the type of fiber running between these rooms. These patches along with the fiber in the chassis itself should be swapped for 50/125 (aqua). This has not been done yet.

Last Friday (March 23) I looked closer in the system manager at the diagnosis for just the Realtime Ethernet card. I had the impression that it may have been reporting errors itself, and decided to try and swap it. I replaced it from the slow computer in the rack in the computer user's room. It appeared to fix the CRC errors and I left it running over the weekend. It was still running on Monday morning and appears to have done the trick.

Caveat: My memory is somewhat fuzzy and the above steps may not have occurred in exactly the order described.

After taking spectra on the beamsplitter, and looking at a comparison between damping on and off, I realized the damping was not providing the intended effect.
I double checked a few things before starting to blame other crews :) :
-damping filters loaded and activated
-watchdogs untripped
-model correctly wired
-signal is going to the dac

When looking at the current and voltage channels at the ouput of the coildrivers when sending a signal to the osems, it seems like the coildriver is not receiving anything.

Will discuss tomorrow with Richard to see if that's a simple cabling issue.

This morning all power to SUS, SEI, HEPI, Timing, TCS and ISC was turned off (including all IO chassis). 
- We then placed a DC Supply Sequencer D1200757 in ISC Rack C1. This ensures ±24VDC is present prior to ±18VDC. 
- All AC power cords were rerouted on top of the racks. 
- Front end computers and IO chassis were restarted by Richard.
- Power was restored to all electronics (except TCS)
- Looked at RF signals coming out of RF Amplifier for both the 71MHz (17.5dB)and 24MHz (19dB).

R. McCarthy, F. Clara, S. Dwyer

Modifying boot script for front ends (Jim B.)

ISC rack power work (Richard, Filiberto)

See activity at MY (moving stuff for Storage?)...Jodi & Apollo?

Terry S. escorted Rod Luna & Ernest in LVEA

Vault PEM work (Richard/gerardo)

ISC EY work (Sheila & crew)

At around 4pm the LVEA is being transitioned to Laser Hazard for IO work.

Dust Monitors: 

• EY Calibration Failure has been alarming all day (so this alarm was DISABLED via Alarm Manager)
• Optics Lab Dust Monitor had INVALID alarms throughout the day (and don't see place to disable it on Alarm Manager)

Maintenance Visitors:

• Sprague on site
• CP1 had Liquid Nitrogen fill

The Apollo crew and I spent much of the day trying to understand the exact contents of crates at Y Mid so that we can sequester 3IFO-destined items as required by NSF. We made some progress. Four unmarked crates contained PCal Pier Weldments (aka Pylons). The crates were marked and drawings attached. Serials numbers 1 (destined for X End) and 2 (destined for Y End) are stored in the middle bay. Serial numbers 4 and 5 are destined for 3IFO and are therefore stored in the VEA: hard copies of the ICS Part Records showing updated location and sub-location were added to the drawings. (For the sake of the curious: serial number 3 is in the LSB lab.) We are still trying to get a handle on exactly how many of remaining crates in the VEA are 3IFO PSL-related. I sent an email (with pix) to Benno trying to get some clarification of his lists.

In addition, the first article OpLev test set-up removal and clean-up were completed. The leaner and the base plate were removed from the VEA: they will remain by the outer roll-up door until I understand whether that particular item is destined for here or 3IFO.

[Cheryl, Joe, Giacomo]

Yesterday evening, we removed two of the irises that were used in the past as references for the IMC (in front of MC2 and MC?), to be used in front of PRM and PR2 as references for the pointing into the PRC. We adjusted their height to ~159 (for PRM) and ~170 (for PR2) mm. The following steps were performed:

- the iris on HAM3 was centered horizontally wrt PR2, by measuring its position wrt the barrel of the optic using a ruler. Its height was set to nominal, but seemed well centered to PR2.

- IM4 offset were adjusted to center the beam on the iris (new values: pitch = -2900, yaw = 1250)

- at this point, the beam seemed already centered on PRM to <2 mm, so we considered it good

- we aligned the iris on HAM2 (inside PR cavity) to be centered on the beam (again, leaving the height nominal)

At this point, we put a mirror between the iris and PR2, and used it to retroreflect the beam all the way to PRM through both irises. We finally steered PRM to send the beam back again to PR2. This is not a very fine alignment (the beam become pretty big at each bounce with this setup), but was just done to verify taht PRM pitch/yaw were not badly off (infact, the alignment crew had some difficulty with their equipment and could only very the propoer position of the center of the PRM optic, but not its orientation).