Quick VPT Test Rig meeting - minutes

Date of meeting: 7 July 2000

Venue: RAL

Present: P Flower, B Kennedy, L Lintern, M Sproston, A Turner

1.  Mechanics

• ALL has finished prototype can for noise tests.  MS has made preliminary tests.  Some run-to-run variation seen, and not yet understood.  No sign so far of any problem with pickup.  MS/JHW will use Stephenson preamp for more noise studies next week.
• Stepper motor drive belt and some coax cables found to be weakly magnetic.  This is probably negligible, but ALL has ordered a backup drive belt with glass-fibre (rather than steel) reinforcement in case it proves to be a problem.   There is no obvious alternative for the cables.

2.  Electronics

• Ordering of 8-way serial port system from Advantec still held up because Adv. can only supply 25-pin connectors rather than more up-to-date 9-pin version.   ALL is still investigating.
• The preamps from Bristol have still not shown up.  BWK will contact Dave Cussans to find out more.

3.  News from Brunel

• Email received from Peter H.  Omar has made good progress with the LabView control program.  The prototype torpedo has "final" connector and external 8m wiring and will be evaluated next week.  The GPIB isolator has failed and is being returned for repair.

4.  CRISTAL/db server

• MS/BWK have ordered two bar-code readers (one for Brunel) and extra memory for the CRISTAL server PC.

Bruce Kennedy / 05 December 2003