From time to time things happen to make us glad that we decided to go a certain route or try a different approach to a problem. It gives me considerable satisfaction to make the following announcement to the NAAPO community.

The Consortium welcomes as its newest member institution - - Manchester College, North Manchester, Indiana. The faculty representative to the consortium will be Dr. Dwight Beery.

A survey at 3.9 GHz of the declination band between the equator and 9 degrees north has been carried out at Zelenchuk, USSR, using the Kraus-type antenna RATAN-600. The consortium interns are ready to begin a careful comparison between the 3.9 GHz sources and the 1.4 GHz Ohio Survey sources to attempt to compile a list of centimeter enhanced sources.

This work will be carried out intially at the Otterbein NAAPO headquarters.

Word has been received after sane viscious prodding by Dixon-R that the air ccnditioner will indeed be installed soon. The intention is to start the installation next Monday, 14 July, This means that observations should begin again within a week or so. Good news, indeed.

AGENDA:

0. Misc. Announcements
1. Status of Air Conditioner
2. Status of Telephone(s)
3. Ground Plane Repair
4. Security Fence report
5. Discussion of Scientific Mission

A decision made some months ago to reduce the cost of phone service at the radio telescope is now being implemented. We have requested GTE to remove all but the one phone set in the focus room. We will replace the extension phones with our own sets, (one purchased, one donated), install a local intercom and operate all on-site communications without bothering GTE.

This will save whoever pays the phone bill about $100 a month. (Ed. note: that will buy a lot of cheese sandwiches.)

"BIG EAR IS BEING USED BY THE ELECTROSCIENCE LABORATORY AT OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY AS A GIANT COMPACT RANGE FOR A 7 - MONTH SCATTERING STUDY SPONSORED BY THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE!!!" [J. D. Kraus]

DUE TO TIME AND SPACE LIMITATIONS THE REPORT OF THE JULY 5 WORKIN6 SESSION WILL APPEAR IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF NAAPO-NEWS [Editor}

On Tuesday evening, July 8, Bob Dixon conducted a briefing for Mark Eickhoff and Mark Johnston to introduce them to the operating system for the telescope control and data processing computer (PDP 11/23). Intent of the briefing is to get them programing the computer as soon as possible.

The first project assigned to them is to generate the soft-ware to drive the control room monitor with a running data update to display various times, celestial coordinates of the beam center, galactic coordinates of the beam center, a labelled display of objects moving through the beam and a variety of other information that might be called up from the operators console. This project will introduce the interns to the available hardware and the programming techniques. They will be writing Fortran subroutines to handle the task.

We have the capability of doing the routine programing from the Otterbein Data Center. This should save a considerable amount of gasoline and shoeleather. It will not be possible to test the programs completely from Westerville because we do not have a VT100 terminal for which the routines are written. This will necessitate some travel to the Dreese Lab radio observatory headquarters to get the final adjustments to the programs worked out.

At last we have gotten the interns in out or the hot sun on the ground plane of the telescope.

One of the important things I have learned this spring in travelling from place to place talking about NAAPO and Big Ear is the eagerness with which students grab on to the idea of hands-on experience in such a project. Therefore, I would like to appeal for all member institutions to assess the number of these newsletters that you think would be reasonably distributed to students in your departments of interest. You might even include the posting of the current newletter on a bulletin board or two to attract attention.

I will be happy to send along additional copies if you inform me how many you can conveniently distribute. I will also be pleased to include any students on the regular mailing list. We will have the regular information form in each newsletter for adding or changing an address.

Any help you can give in passing along our message will be appreciated. [Phil Barnhart]

RADOBS is in need of a DEC Tape Deck to use with the PDP 11/23. We are presently operating with a limited storage capacity and can use the high density storage possible using the tape system.

Anyone knowing of such equipment for loan or gift (or, UGH, for low cost sale) please contact any of the RADOBS personnel. In particular, Bob Dixon would love to hear from you. [(614) 292-4843]

The RADOBS (that is, the radio telescope operation) has a DEC PDP 11/4O available for whomever might want it. It is presently not working, but what a neat project for someone who needs the power and capability offered by this machine. It is NOT a desk top computer but is in good condition. We will be glad to sell, trade, give or scavenge the carcass. Bob Dixon is combing through it at the present time to see if there is anything we can easily use out of it.

If you are at all interested or know someone who might be interested, give Bob a call at: (614 ) 292-4843

Please address your comments and questions (and material for the Newsletter) to:

Dr. Philip E. Barnhart, NAAPO
Department of Physics/Astronomy
Otterbein College
Westerville, Ohio 43O81

(614) 898-1516