Minutes/Action items of "Instrumentation-Systems-SDA" monthly meeting March 4, 2009 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- D. Capista, M. Convery, K. Gollwitzer, V. Lebedev, C. McClure, T. Meyer, V. Papadimitriou, D. Slimmer, R. Thurman-Keup, M.J.Yang, J. Zagel We discussed the following: -------------------------- 1) Status of Flying Wire systems - J. Zagel, V. Papadimitriou 2) MI IPM Acnet data - T. Meyer 3) TeV SBD and FBI Auto Calibration Status - T. Meyer, D. Nicklaus 4) RFT board status - C. McClure ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Conclusions-Action Items: 1) a) Jim discussed the resolution to the problem we had with MI Flying Wires during multibatch proton injection for the first pass in the second batch at 8 GeV. The problem had to do with the fact that the 2nd batch was injected while the wire was flying and was addressed by delaying the start of the fly by 0.05 seconds. b) Vaia reported on a study of horizontal MI 8 and 150 GeV proton emittances. The study revealed several interesting features in the emittance measurements, during multibatch operation. For example, the fit amplitudes were significantly different between the 1st and 2nd proton batch. Sigmas, emittances and centroids have been also exhibiting bigger differences than before between the 1st and 2nd wire pass at 8 Gev during proton multibatch operation. Jim traced the fit amplitude difference to the integrator not resetting to 0 after the 1st batch, and he decreased the FW Integrator hold time from 200ns to 100ns. On the basis of two stores after the Integrator fix, there was significantly smaller difference in the amplitudes of the 1st and 2nd batch but both amplitudes were smaller than before. Jim plans to recheck the timing during a transfer. There will be a fresh look at these measurements after the adjustment of the integrator hold time. 2) The study of the H2 IPM ACNET data, focusing on the fractional tune (device I:H2PMFP[3]) for which we have independent measurements via BPM turn by turn, continues. Tom and Denton have found that if they impose some qualitative cuts to position and sigma, there is less inconsistency between IPM data and other Main Injector data. The signal to noise is better as well in the second batch after increasing the voltage on spec 12. 3) The autocalibration OAC for the TeV SBD and FBI, although running for about 5 years now, it was running on a "test" mode and was never enabled to "autocalibrate". Dennis Nicklaus is now trying to enable the OAC. Although the TeV SBD/FBI calibration for protons and pbars now does not seem off more than 2%, we are still interested in the history of the calibration factors over the past 5 years. The scale factors can be found at: http://www-bd.fnal.gov/javaapplications/html_write/SBDCalibration/ . The Main Injector FBI was not calibrated either for the past several years because it was assumed it was calibrated automatically as well. There is no Main Injector calibration OAC available at this point and Tom calibrated the Main Injector FBI on March 5, 2009. The calibration scale was found to be 1.5% low for protons and 1% high for pbars. There is an additional issue of calibrating FBI between Main Injector and Tevatron. (Vaia had pointed out a few weeks ago a Tev Injection Efficiency for protons at the level of 1.03 to 1.04. After the calibration of the Main Injector FBI this efficiency is varying between 1.012 and 1.016). 4) The first VRFT board is assembled and in the process of being debugged and tested. Progress is being made testing the first module. The tested VRFT should be able to be delivered to Jim Zagel within a month. A second VRFT is being assembled at this time. Some modifications to the VRFT board design need to be made before a second order of 10 circuit boards is placed. An outside assembly house will likely be used to assemble the second run of modules. Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 1, 2009.