Hi Giuseppe --

  The block schedule for the May/June'18 EVN session shows that your
experiment(s) EC064  will be observed.  This e-mail aims to provide
some help in scheduling, with attachments as described below.

  For this session, we'd like to continue the procedure for depositing
your schedules that we tested during the previous four sessions.  
Instead of uploading sched output to the vlbeer server, just mail your 
key file to: 
        jops@jive.eu
and we'll populate the necessary places on vlbeer and forward the key
file to Socorro if you have a global observation.
 

INPUTS TO SCHED (checked to work in sched version 11.4)

  a)  setini section(s) for your key file(s), to handle the patching
    for EVN stations that have moved to the digital DBBC back-end.  
    Use the "SETINI =" name of the setini section in the "setup= " line 
    of your key files (e.g., "setup = sess218.X256").
    The setini plug-in may contain more stations than you have allocated;
    always base the STATIONS= line in your key-file(s) on the stations
    listed on the block schedule for your experiment(s).

 ---> attach.1: sess218X256nonE.setini 

    (The "nonE" part of the file-name refers to avoidance of a
    specific DBBC firmware version that has recently been shown
    to produce uneven amplitudes across BBC channels in some caes.)


  b) slightly modified stations_RDBE.dat & locations.dat catalogs to work 
    with the above setini section(s).  
    
 ---> attach.#: sta.sess218.114_RDBE.dat
 ---> attach.#: loc.sess218.114.dat

    Lines directing use these modified catalogs are included in the
    setini plug-in(s).  These assume that the catalogs are located in the
    working directory from which you're running sched.  

    This would be the first time that "Wn" as the norhtern of the Wettzell
    twin-telescopes would be used in an EVN observation.  After discussions
    with Christian and Gerhard, we inserted it into these catalogs,
    as well as into the setini plug-in.


  c) sched-version issues:   In the previous session, everyone used sched
    version 11.4, so I have only made versions of the modified catalogs   
    consistent with that version.  Get in touch if you can't run v11.4.


  d) A summary of changes since the last time that you may have scheduled
    (for included stations):

    *) This would be the first time that "Wn" as the norhtern one of the 
      Wettzell twin-telescopes would be used in an EVN observation.  
      After discussions with Christian and Gerhard, we inserted it into 
      these station/location catalogs and the setini plug-in above.

    *) For stations that are explicitly mentioned in the setini plug-in(s),
      don't worry about comments in the sched.runlog file from SETFCAT
      (e.g., "SCHED could not find a frequency catalog group that matched 
      the setup file" or EFLSBERG/HART having only half of the total BW 
      within the IFs).


GENERAL POINTS

  *) I wasn't sure from the proposal exacly what frequencies would
    be needed to track the satellites, so I just put in 64 contiguous
    MHz starting from 8367.49.  Feel free to adjust the FREQREF/FREQOFF.
    The only possible hicchup could be with the LO settings (FIRSTLO line
    per station).  The current ones would be fine for sky frequencies
    in the range 8170-8590.  The basic rules of thumb would be:
       8080 stations:  lower Nyquist zone = 8080+10 -> 8080+512
                          (this provides the upper limit of 8590 above)
                       upper Nyquist zone = 8080+512 -> 8080+1024
               (but Noto wouldn't be able to do the upper Nyquist zone)

       7650 station: Yebes always want to use the upper Nyquist zone
         thus 7650 =  7650+512 -> 7650+1024
                          (this provides the bottom limit of 8170 above)
       for frequencies higher than this, use firstlo=8100 for Ys

      In any case, all BBCs from the same IF (IFCHAN) would need to
      be in a single Nyquist zone.

  *) If you want to avoid the flagging of visibilities in which the
    baseline apriori delay-rates are close enough to zero to allow
    the phase-cal tones to correlate with each other, you can put the
    PCAL to off in the setini blocks.  Since the apriori delay-rate is
    proportional to "u", this flagging would correspond to removing a 
    thin vertical stripe centered around u=0 from the u-v coverage.  
    The attached setini plug-in(s) turn off phase-cal tones by default.  
    If you want phase-cals on, just change the 'off' to '1MHz'.

  *) An explicit PRESTART=0 line is included in the setini plug-in(s).
    The digital back-ends for the EVN stations don't need a positive
    value here, but we have not yet got that into sched, which would 
    still apply a default of 5s without this line. 

  *) The RadioNet trans-national access (TNA) program returns for 2017-20.
    More of the adminstration moves to Bonn than in previous RadioNet
    programs.  You'll hear more about the benefits (& responsibilities) 
    or your project being TNA-eligible a little later.


  The due date for schedules mentioned in the block schedule is 14 May,
which is already impossible (for various reasons, the block schedule 
could be finalized only much later than usual with respect to the start 
of the session).  Still try to be as early as you reasonably can.  
The sooner we receive your schedule, the more time we would have 
to check things over and iterate if necessary before we send it off 
to the stations.

  Remember: just mail the key file(s) to  jops@jive.eu  once you're happy 
with the schedule(s), instead of uploading everything to the vlbeer server.  
Don't hesitate to get in contact with us if you have any questions about 
scheduling.  Sorry for having things run so late this time.

thanks,
bob