Minutes of the DRAGON Meeting for September 28, 2004

Present: DO, DH, CV, JC, AO, LB, PM, GR, CJ, UG, MT, JP, DG, WRH 
(Wolf-Rudiger Hannes new student)

1) Previous Minutes

-the reason for the chimney in the ion chamber was to protect people
-several places where "though" should be "thought"

2) Business Arising

-CV made a list of the current inventory of DSSSD's but the boxes are 
mixed up so it is not easy to tell which detector is a good one and which 
may not be
   -MT will send an email to Mike Lamey to see if he has some input
-JDA will send detector with broken wires back to Micron
-DH will ask Bob Laxdal to check the timing constant on FC4
-an REA form has been submitted

3) Status/Progress

Recovery from Power Outage

-gas target computer fan has been replaced
-ED's are conditioning up at the 150 kV range for ED1 and 125 kV range for 
ED2
-quad and sextupole power supplies have been switched around so that they 
now power the correct elements
   -checks for polarity have been made
   -Hall probes in Q9 and Q10 indicate the SAME values as the set 
   point
   -Hall probes in SX3 and SX4 indicate DIFFERENT values from the set 
   point
-IC gas handling system is 90% complete	
   -waiting for 3 tube pieces to finish the physical construction
-Ultra VNC is running on the CCD camera computer
   -gives supposedly better performance

DAQ (JP)

-one of the photomultiplier tube amplifier 612 units was bringing down one 
of the NIM bin power lines so the 
   -unit was swapped by DG and JP for a 612A which matches the other
   two units
   -this solved the problem
-data errors appearing in the new DAQ software showed up
   -appeared to be because VETO was not enabling
   -fiddling with cables and buttons on one of the modules solved the 
   problem -a list of "strange problems" and their past solutions will be 
   compiled 
-debugging errors in the new analyzer will be reported in detail and will 
most likely crash the analyzer until they are fixed
-errors during running with debugging switched off will be reported on one 
line and DAQ will carry on
-the new analyzer will initially provide 18 histograms:

1. BGO energy (MeV or keV) vs BGO number  for gamma singles events

2. ditto for coinc. events

3. "Leading gamma" energy  for gamma singles events

4. ditto for coinc. events

5. r.f. time for gamma singles

6. r.f. time for gamma coinc.

7. DSSSD energy vs strip number  singles events

8. ditto  coinc. events

9. DSSSD x-vs-y  singles

10. DSSSD x-vs-y coinc. events

11. r.f. time for DSSSD singles

12. r.f. time for DSSSD coincidences

13. TOF  gamma-start/HI-stop vs TOF HI-start/gamma-stop

14. TOF gamma-start/HI-stop  (1-d, higher resolution than histo #11)

15. Elastic monitor  energy vs r.f. time

16. ditto for the other elastic monitor

17.  "Leading gamma" energy, gated by a cut on TOF

18.  DSSSD energy, gated by same cut on TOF
  
-new ROOT spectra are no longer related to the ODB
  -format of the online spectra are similar to the PAW versions
  -no cuts can be made to online spectra

PPAC (JC and CV)

-time resolution has been improved to 600 ps FWHM by using the "2, 6 
micron foil" system
   -tests done using alphas
-gas used was ethane and isobutane with ethane giving the best result
-a mixture including CF4 would be difficult to do
-maximum voltage applied (250 V)  is different than literature (340 V)

4)Stable Beam Run (Tasks to Complete)

-energy calibration of BGO's
-DSSSD check with pulser and using alpha contaminant peak
   -suggested that the metal plate behind the DSSSD be isolated due to the 
   possibility of a short if a contact wire comes loose
   -DSSSD will be removed and isolated by JC and DO
-check surface barrier detectors (elastic monitors)
-load trap with hydrogen on Thursday
-possible that Ne21 beam will be delivered Thursday night but due to 
operator training most likely that useful beam will arrive Friday morning
-beam request form is submitted
-separator tune needs to be set
-personnel schedule needs to be circulated
-run plan has been circulated previously

5) Na21 Analysis

-CJ and MT need to discuss some issues this afternoon and will report 
soon on progress

6) C12 Analysis

-LB has done some further fitting of the elastic spectra which give a 
smoother fit that previous
-GEANT is now running again for C12 simulations
  -MT will begin work again soon on asymmetry problems
  -related to the above is that the current gamma ray array simulation 
  will be update on the full DRAGON simulation by DG and MT
  -cascades will also be updated

7) AOB

-new student, Wolf-Rudiger Hannes,  of LB to work on C12 normalizations
-JP will simplify the electrons for the surface barrier detectors for this 
upcoming run
  -they will be run without suppression grids, new connections seem to be 
  solving many of the previous problems
-collimator on the elastics is now more refined