Homestake meeting minutes, 07/24/2014

Attending: Gary, Vuk, Gwynne, Tanner, Riccardo, Shivaraj, Eric, Nelson

Homestake wiki: https://zzz.physics.umn.edu/groups/homestake/home

Our agenda:

1) Homestake update

• Next visit

Vuk: Victor and Vuk going to Homestake 07/28-29 to finalize locations of seismometers, digitizers and batteries at the 4850 and 1700 locations. Also will find locations for the GPS antennae near yates and ross shafts. Will discuss scheduling of the SDSTA work, and start planning for the next visit in September, when we will try to build some of the surface and underground stations.

• Surface stations

Gary: summarized latest visit to Homestake to scout possible surface locations.

OHS: good location, maybe not bedrock, also could here the ventilation. Telemetry to Ross or Yates is possible. Lab property, road ploughed in the winter.

WTP: standing on bedrock, but there are people and machinery nearby. Telemetry to Yates could be possible.

RRDG: great site but on Barrick property so we need a permit. There is a road to it, ploughed at least most of the way, would need their permit and key for access. Large drop to the open pit nearby. Telemetry possible. Probably very windy, will have to be careful with the solar panel etc.

LHS: near a highschool, gives aperture in the opposite direction from other locations (west). School enthusiastic to help us out. Could be noisy, but supports outreach. Maybe meet with classes as part of the preparation, have students help us etc. Link via school internet, no line of site with Yates/Ross. ALso use power locally. The site is on bedrock (it seems).

Yates: ridge near the entrance gate, somewhat away from Yates machinery. Could use solar, telemetry to Yates.

Ross: a couple of locations that could have telemetry to Yates. Ridge line passing through there.

Both Ross and yates locations should be decoupled from GPS and master digitizers.

ALso looked at 3 regions further out, to increase aperture. Private ownership, should be able to find someone to allow us to build stations. No telemetry, will have to harvest periodically. Summer/vacation/ski homes, so it will not be easy to find owners. Should try again in September.

2) UMN test setup

Tanner: returned the Liteway equipment.

Vuk: finalized the design of transceivers for the GPS distribution system, will use single-mode fibers driven by lasers. In our test setup, we tested the option with multimode fibers driven by LEDs. Hope to make an order for the transceivers and optical fibers in a week or two.

3) Analysis of existing data

1. Estimation algorithms (Shivaraj, Eric, Noah) - no news

Next meeting: Aug 7