Unfortunately, we only had one good CARM offset reduction to powers of about 25, but then my QPD loop blew it. We spent the vast majority of the night dealing with headaches and annoyances. 

Things that were a pain:

• If TRX is showing large excursions after finding resonance, there is no hope. These translate into large impulses while reducing the CARM offset, which the PRMI has no chance of handling. The first time aligning the green beat did not help this. For some reason, the second time did, though the beatnote amplitude wasn't increased noticibly. 
  • NOTICE: We should re-align the X green beatnote every night, after a solid ASS run, before any serious locking work. 
  • Afterwards, phase tracker UGFs (which depend on beatnote amplitude, and thereby frequency) should be frequently checked. 
• We suffered some amount from ETMX wandering. Not only for realigning between lock attempts, but on one occasion, with CARM held off, GTRX wandered to half its nominal value, leading to a huge effective DARM offset, which made it impossible to lock MICH with any reasonble power in the arms. Other times, simply turning off POX/POY locking, after setting up the beatnotes, was enough to significantly change the alignment. 
• IMC was mildly tempermental, at its worst refusing to lock for ~20min. One suspicion I have is that when the PMC PZT is nearing its rail, things go bad. The PZT voltage was above 200 when this was happening, after relocking the PMC to ~150, it seems ok. I thing I've also had this problem at PZT voltages of ~50. Something to look out for. 

Other stuff:

• We are excited for the prospect of the FOL system, as chasing the FSS temperature around is no fun. 
• UGF servo triggering greatly helps the PRMI reacquire if it briefly flashes out, since the multipliers don't run away. This exacerbated the ALS excursion problem. 
• Using POPDC whitening made it very tough to hold the PRMI. Maybe because we didn't reset the dark offset...?