TITLE: 02/17 Eve Shift: 0030-0600 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 140 Mpc
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ryan S
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    SEI_ENV state: USEISM
    Wind: 9mph Gusts, 5mph 3min avg
    Primary useism: 0.04 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.53 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:

Currently Observing and have been Locked for 3 hours. Our range was bad, which we figured was due to squeezing being way worse than last lock and not getting better with thermalization. We popped out of Observing to adjust squeezing but it was giving us issues and we had trouble getting IR to lock (see Ryan's alog). Finally were able to get the filter cavity locked by adjusting the OPO temp, but our squeezing was still bad, so Ryan adjusted the OPO temperature again and got a tiny bit of squeezing out (-1db), but not much. Range is basically back to where it was before all this.

Lockloss @ 17:03 UTC - link to lockloss tool

ETMX glitch lockloss, no other obvious cause.

Sun Feb 16 10:11:43 2025 INFO: Fill completed in 11min 40secs

TCmins [-54C, -53C] OAT (+1C, 34F) DeltaTempTime 10:11:46

TITLE: 02/16 Day Shift: 1530-0030 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 150Mpc
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Corey
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    SEI_ENV state: USEISM
    Wind: 7mph Gusts, 5mph 3min avg
    Primary useism: 0.04 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.62 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY: H1 has been locked for 4.5 hours. Inch or two of new snow on the ground this morning.

• Wind is low, microseism high and steady just above 95th percentile

TITLE: 02/16 Eve Shift: 0030-0600 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 145Mpc
INCOMING OPERATOR: Corey
SHIFT SUMMARY:

IFO is in NLN and OBSERVING as of 04:21 UTC

Overall calm shift with one Lockloss (alog 82832). Lock re-acquisition was slow due to high and increasing microseism - while we didn't lose lock during re-acquisition, we DRMI, PRMI and MICH_FRINGES took a long time. Squeezing is still bad but range trace seems to be on the rise.

LOG:

Lockloss - no immediate environmental or other cause. Will continue investigating as we relock.

TITLE: 02/16 Day Shift: 1530-0030 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Lock Acquisition
INCOMING OPERATOR: Ibrahim
SHIFT SUMMARY: One lockloss this shift at the end of calibration sweeps and H1 has been trying to relock since. [OpsInfo] I've put new damping settings for ETMY mode 20 into the Guardian and loaded; these have been working well the past couple of days.

• 19:30 - Dropped observing for scheduled calibration sweeps - alog82827
• 20:01 - Lockloss at end of sweeps
  • Went immediately into initial alignment, ran automatically
  • Been a long relock due to two locklosses at TRANSITION_FROM_ETMX and lots of random dropouts during ALS, FIND_IR, and DRMI with no clear causes. Microseism has been higher this afternoon, but generally alignment has been good and signals have looked stable

TITLE: 02/16 Eve Shift: 0030-0600 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Lock Acquisition
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Ryan S
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    SEI_ENV state: USEISM
    Wind: 3mph Gusts, 1mph 3min avg
    Primary useism: 0.04 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.60 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY:

IFO is in LOCKING

Having a lot of issues, starting with a LL due to a failed Cal Sweep. Since then, DAY Ops (Ryan S) has experienced locking issues at ALS, IR, DRMI and TRANSITION_ETMX. Interestingly, despite high microseism, ALS locking doesn't look noisy and IFO seems to lose lock without evidence of high ground motion.

Will continue investigating, troubleshooting and locking.

While attempting to lock H1 this afternoon, occasionally I would notice the ALS-X transmission get a bit noisy, then it would drop out entirely and there would be a lockloss. On a couple of the more recent instances of this, there was also an MC2 saturation callout right before the lockloss, leading me to believe the IMC was having trouble staying locked. The RefCav alignment has been dropping over the past several days (likely due to the change in weather) and has needed an adjustment, so, thinking that might help the IMC, I paused between lock attempts to touch up the RefCav alignment using the picomotor mirrors in the FSS path. I was only able to improve the signal on the TPD from about 630mV to 740mV in the few minutes I spent, but I was about at the limit of improvement I think I could get. I'm not sure if this helped at all as H1 still has yet to relock, but I figure this is still an improvement.

Following the wiki instructions, I ran broadband and Simulines calibration sweeps this morning. This was with the updated Simulines sweep from Vlad with the last frequency point cut out, however H1 again lost lock towards the end of the Simulines injections (link to lockloss tool). See previous investigations into these locklosses in alog82704.

The following injections were the ones still running at the time of the lockloss at 20:01:53 UTC:

Broadband sweep ran from 19:30:50 to 19:36:06 UTC, Simulines sweep ran from 19:36:53 to 20:01:53 UTC (ended at lockloss). The 7.68Hz DARM injection is clearly seen on the lockloss trends.

Sat Feb 15 10:07:24 2025 INFO: Fill completed in 7min 20secs

TCmins [-48C, -46C] OAT (-3C, 27F) DeltaTempTime 10:07:23

TITLE: 02/15 Day Shift: 1530-0030 UTC (0730-1630 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Observing at 154Mpc
OUTGOING OPERATOR: Corey
CURRENT ENVIRONMENT:
    SEI_ENV state: USEISM
    Wind: 1mph Gusts, 0mph 3min avg
    Primary useism: 0.04 μm/s
    Secondary useism: 0.47 μm/s
QUICK SUMMARY: H1 has been locked for 8.5 hours with inspiral range increasing over this stretch due to decreasing noise at high frequency. (Perhaps SQZ phase? Trend attached)

• ETMY mode 20 is around 2.68 with the gain having been off this lock, but I've engaged FM1+FM3+FM10 G=-1.0 to see if that keeps working
• Wind is low, secondary microseism mostly steady right below 90th percentile

TITLE: 02/15 Eve Shift: 0030-0600 UTC (1630-2200 PST), all times posted in UTC
STATE of H1: Locking
INCOMING OPERATOR: Corey
SHIFT SUMMARY:

IFO is in NLN and OBSERVING as of 04:16 UTC.

EDIT: IFO is LOCKING at SDF_REVERT after a 05:59 UTC Lockloss

Overall calm shift with one lockloss due to an Earthquake (alog 82821).

Other:

• We also survived another earthquake (4.9 from W Texas).
• Range is quite low due to bad high frequency squeezing, which I was told to expect. This will probably remain the case until more table work is done next week.
• I tried (from Sheila and Ryan S's recommendation) a small test to see if going into GREEN_ARMS_MANUAL, locking the arms manually, then going through in INITIAL_ALIGNMENT_OFFLOADED would bypass our ALS locking failures. Interestingly, this worked, allowing us to lock with normal locking without running into ALS problems - the investigation continues.
• Ryan's new FM 1,3,10 -1G EY Violin Mode 20 seems to have worked, reaching a pre-LL minimum of 0.18 before nouncing about that. As such after the reacquisition, I re-set those as the EY20 settings.

LOG:

None

Lockloss due to 5.7 EQ in Mongolia. Initially I thought we rode it out since the EQ happened since verbal sounded it 30 minutes before losing lock. Though looking at the later arriving R waves, we seem to have lost lock 3 minutes after they were detected by ISI Sensors, microseism FOM and Picket Fence. Right after the LL, EQ mode activated. High secondary microseism likely contributes to higher EQ susceptibility too.

Shall begin to re-lock once it passes.

Robert, Tyler, Richard, Eric, TJ

Several years ago we were unable to lock because the suspensions were getting hot and lengthening when it was very cold out. The problem was that our temperature control sensors were mounted on the walls, and were influenced by the temperature of the walls. As a result, the HVAC overheated the LVEA to keep the wall sensors at the same temperature when it was very cold out, or over-cooled the LVEA when the sun shown on the walls (33320). We moved some of the sensors to cable trays by the vacuum enclosure to combat this problem, but, since the sensors on the cable trays dont provide full coverage, we still use many of the wall sensors. Yesterday we took more of the wall sensors out of the control average because we are having some problems in this cold snap with the suspensions lengthening.

In addition, TJ altered the LVEA temperature figure of merit to focus on the sensors on the cable trays so that we would be alerted to temperature increases at the chambers, where previously we were mainly monitoring the temperature at the walls.

The figure shows which sensors are now being used (checked boxes). It also shows the new FOM - the first 4 channels are on cable trays near the IFO.

Robert, Jennie, Keita, Mayank, Rick

People working in the optics lab noticed a sudden infestation of winged termites, unmated queens and kings participting in a nuptial flight. We found the nest from which they had emerged, full of alates and immature termites, in the wall behind the flow benches (see figure), and possibly extending into the fan boxes of the flow benches, which are wooden. We temporarily sealed up the nest entrance (see figure) but we should probably deal with the colony, both because of damage from feeding, and because there will be occasional mating flights from the colony.