Pump down #66 is 435 days old. RGA scan is normal. New maglev is fine. New UPS is in place but not hooked up to communicate.

V1 has bare minimum interlock. Pirani vacuum gauges  PTP1 and PRP do not communicate with readout system.

There is no emergency dial out in case of vacuum loss.  Our existing vacuum dedicated desk top computer is dead.

New cold cathodes, Pirani gauges and gauge controller should be added.

In general: vacuum system needs an upgrade !

The laser power is down 5-6%

The PMC power is seems to be on the rise, ( MOPA_AMPMON is dropping ?) but I do not think it is real. We have Santa Anna wind condition, when the relative humidity drops and  ......

There is an other funky think. The room temp became rock solid. The PSL HEPAs running at 20% and IFO-room ACs are also in normal operational mode.

Illuminators and PSL lights turned off.
HEPA filter speed increased from 20 to 100%

 Koji did a nice job increasing light power with some joggling.

The RFMnetwork is down.  MC2 sus damping restored.

The PSL enclosure HEPAs turned on at 30%

MC2 damping restored,  MZ locked and the arms are flashing now.

RFAMPD_DCMON disappered on Nov 5, 2009

The concrete  floor cutting has begun next door at CES

ATM1: Seismometers are saturating, suspensions are OK

Atm2 : activity next door,  diesel Backhoe and diesel concrete cutter are running

Atm3: CES exhaust fans output  is pick up by 40M-Annex-North AC unit  intake. The 40m office room has some diesel smell...........see # 2377

I added ~500 cc of distilled water to the laser chiller yesterday.

8 days plot: Thurdsay, Friday, Sat and Sun without construction

 Here is a 7 years plot of  of the 40m temperature variations.

 Saturday's special event of braking up the large concrete pieces in CES bay was un event full.

 Composite video matrix switchers with 32 BNC in and 32 BNC channels out are listed.

The construction activity is shaking the tables in the control room.  The compactor- large remote controlled jackhammer is in the bottom of the 16-17 ft deep hole 15 ft east of ITMY in CES bay. The suspensions  are holding OK. PRM, MC1 and MC3 are effected mostly.

 Diesel fumes are pumped away from control room AC intakes  with the help of newly installed  reflector boxes on the CES wall  fans.........see # 2272

The vacuum system is at 760 torr  All chambers with doors on and their annuloses are pumped down.

PSL output shutter is still closed. We are fully prepared to star slow pump down tomorrow.

The plan is to reach 1 torr ~ in 6 hrs  without a creating a sand storm.

Oplev positions before and after drag wiped arm TMs as of yesterday. Slow-mode pumpdown has started with 3/4 turn opened  RV1 valve at 8am today.

 Pump down is completed. Valve configuration is VACUUM NORMAL. CC1 pressure is in the ~8 e-5 torr   PSL output shutter is opened.

 We still had some ants visiting the sink area this morning. These ants seem to be addicted to our our Peet's coffe

Spectracide: Bug Stop insect killer was sprayed. Please wash your eating dishes well ! and keep area clean.

At ITMX, on the CES side, 5 Ft  from the wall the jackhammer is on. The susses are holding well.

We have been waiting for this for 20 some years. Arrowhead water with cooler. AWESOME

THANKS Alan

I added 600 cc of Arrowhead Distilled Water to the chiller.

60 days plot shows that about every ~ 10 days I have to add some.

Please check the water level yourself.

We lost our key to the Lightwave 125/6-OPN-PS   The key shop just made one look a like that works.

We are celebrating Rob's promotion to thesis poetry.  These pictures were taken on December 9, 2009

Rob has finished all his measurements in the lab and is officially well prepared to graduate.

 What was the power level, polarization and beam size at beam trap?

The 2W NPRO from Valera arrived today and I haf hidden it somewere in the 40m lab!

Rana was so kind to make this entry for me

CES construction is progressing. The 40m suspensions are bearing well.

atm1, PEM  vs sus plots of 120 days

atm2, big pool walls are in place, ~10 ft east of south arm

atm3, 10 ft east of ITMY

atm4, ~60 ft east of ITMY

atm5, cold weather effect of N2 evaporator tower

The low PMC transmission alarm was on this morning. The PMC alignment needs a touch up.

The electrical shop has to connect the new power transformer at CES. This means we will have no AC power for ~8 hrs on Saturday, February 20

Is this date good for us to power down ALL equipment in the lab?

Rana:  Yes

I have installed a slow start throttle valve in front of V3  This spring loaded valve will cut down on the flow at high pressures. There will be no more sand storme

and static built-up during pump down.

IN VACUUM beam heights are ALL 5.5"  This is measured from the top of the optical table to the center of all TMs, mirrors and other optical components. This beam is ~36" above the floor.

PSL (inside of enclosure) main-output  beam: PMC, MZ, RC and ISS  are at 3" heights. IOO Angle & Position, MC-Trans and RFAM qpds are at 4"

ALL OTHER beam heights at atmosphere and  different ISCT (interferrometer sensing, control optical table)s are at 4"

Joe and Alex are working on the computers. Our vacuum system is temporary "All off" condition: meaning all valves are closed, so there is no pumping. cc1 = 1.6e-6 Torr

 Designated vacuum control lap top is trouble some to use. Joe finally fixed it and I switched valve configuration back to vacuum normal. Shutter is open

Only the 40m cranes are running on 480VAC The electricians are rewiring this transformer on the mezzanine so it was shut down.

I tested all three cranes before the 480V power was turned off. The last thing to do with the cranes to wipe them down before use.

It will happen on next Tuesday morning.

Our janitor dropped one 48" long  fluorescent tube on the top cover of ETMX-isct. This accident made glasses fly all over the place.

He cleaned up nicely, but please beware of small glass pieces around ETMX chamber.

We did not clean up on the table in order to reserve oplev and green ITMX pointing alignment.

Plot below shows that the alignment was not effected.

 Our vacuum was not pumped for 4 days. The computers were not up when we started pumping again. The manual reading on P1 was 15 mTorr.

This means that our outgassing plus leakrate is  ~3.8 mTorr /day 

3-5 mTorr / day is normal

There is a planned power outage tomorrow, Saturday from 7am till midnight.

I vented all annulies and switched to ALL OFF configuration. The small region of the RGA is still under vacuum.

The vac-rack: gauges, c1vac1 and UPS turned off.

The 40m safety audit will be at Wednesday afternoon, March 3

Please participate getting our lab to inspection grade safety level.

 Vac- rack is powered back up.  UPS first, than all other power switches from top to bottom of the rack, except Maglev

Manually started one by one TP2 and TP3  to accelerate to 50 KRPM

Brought up vac.control screen on lap-top at /cvs/cds/caltech/medm/c0/ve/VacControl_BAK.adl

V5 and VM3 were opened so TP3 can pump on the RGA

V4 was opened so TP2 can pump on the Maglev-TP1. The Maglev power was  turned on and started acceleration.

The vac control screen positions indicators were checked for true position and annulies vent valves were opened.

RGA manual on/off switch was turned at the top of the RGA-head. Ubuntu copmuter was started at cc4 1.1e-6 Torr

The RGA communication was started with:  ssh c0rga from control room

The rga-script was started ./RGAset.py     This script turns on the filament, rs-232 and scan parameters etc

Vac -configuration: IFO-P1 at atm, RGA is pumped and running in background mode, all annulos at atm

 The brand new OSEM LED and PD can be picked up with a weak magnet. These ferrous metals of LEDs and PDs will be magnetized by sitting in the sus next to the

magnets for years. I hanged optics with new OSEMs and never saw this effect before.

We have to demagnetize them.

They are sandblasting at CES: our particle counts are very high. DO NOT OPEN CHAMBER!

 It turns out that we perfecly timed the big one

In the process of finding the signal of the big chilean earthquake I just realized that we were all off

RGA scan of rga-region only at day 18   This is the back ground of the rga with some calibration gas.

Do not open IFO vacuum envelope today! They are sandblasting again at CES

The oplev plots clearly show the alignment effect of this eq.