The twelfth biennial IVS Technical Operations Workshop (TOW) was held in May 2023 at MIT Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts. At this year’s workshop were some 64 people representing 15 different countries.The TOW is focused on hands-on training and problem resolution in VLBI operations and is thus geared toward the technical staff members at operational and forthcoming VLBI stations.
In addition to specific training sessions on Mark 6 operations, cryogenic system and receiver maintenance, antenna gain calibration, automated pointing models, station monitoring, and much more, this meeting allows station personnel to share notes, collaborate, and network with many people from other stations, the IVS Coordinating Center, and the correlation centers.
Besides the main TOW workshop, this year’s event again incorporated a dedicated VGOS correlation workshop. This 1.5-day workshop followed the TOW; attendees included VGOS correlator staff and other VLBI operations personnel. Workshop topics included a review of the current as well as updates to the VGOS processing pipeline, debugging tools and problem resolution, an overview of mixed-mode processing, and PolConvert.
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(Photos by Dirk Behrend and Nancy Kotary.)