Description: | Somewhere between Oct. 5 2007 and the end of November, we lost the ability to make correct all sky images with the LBA antennae on CS010. The images looked like the left panel (recorded on Jan 10 2008). However, when there were strong RFI sources in a subband, we DID image them beautifully and correctly. Switching off the antennae yielded beautiful, structure-less, noisy images. No obvious other problems were seen in the station hardware, software, or firmware that could be linked to this issue. No broad band near field interference was detected. There were however two suspicious events in the period in which we lost the imaging ability: an unscheduled power failure, and a failed RCU firmware upgrade. On Wednesday Jan 16 2008, Menno Norden went to the field to install new firmware in all RCUs. The right image was recorded on Thursday Jan 17 and shows Cas A, Cyg A, and the Milky Way again! During the (painful) process, we learned an awful lot about the internal details of the station hardware, firmware, and software, finding other problems to entertain us in the near future. |