Message from the Director

The last six months have been dominated by reformulating the future instrumentation programme for presentation at the JCMT Advisory Panel and Board autumn meetings in 1995, restructuring the staff in Hawaii with the run-down of ROE involvement in the JCMT, and completing the preparation for the new instruments RxB3, RxW and SCUBA, which although eagerly awaited have all slipped in delivery.

There have been a number of staff changes, and these are documented elsewhere, but Phil Jewell, the new Head of JCMT Instrumentation, arrived in Hawaii to take up post at the beginning of January. We were extremely fortunate in that he agreed to participate in a number of meetings in the autumn, which allowed me to get him involved in the planning of the JCMT future instrumentation programme. He also attended both the Advisory Panel and Board, and so by the time he arrived on-site he was already well up to speed.

We continue to eagerly await the three new instruments, not only for their increase in performance, but also their reliability as the past six months has seen reliability of all our current suite of instruments fall below what I consider acceptable. We now have plans for a fast-track upgrade to RxA2, to deliver increased performance and higher reliability (through better tuning) over the coming six months. The delays to all new receivers continues to cause problems for telescope scheduling and the Allocation Committees as well as being a constant disappointment to users. At the time of writing I anticipate that, barring a major problem, SCUBA will arrive in Hawaii in April. SCUBA is now in its latest laboratory commissioning phase (see later) and looking great. RxB3 and RxW are expected to arrive sometime later, the precise dates are still somewhat unclear, but both receivers are also looking good and have sensitivity figures which exceed their specifications.

Although the lack of a Head of Instrumentation for the best part of a year has had a delitory effect on the progress of the future programme, it was not as bad as it might have been because of the continuing uncertainty of the Development Fund beyond 1999. We are still not in a position to cast in stone the new programme which will see the JCMT as a front-line and first-class facility well into the next Century. Indeed, at the autumn meeting of the Panel and Board I presented a potential ten-year plan for consideration. Which path the JCMT will eventually pursue will depend on a number of factors, the available funding being a critical element. The main elements of the future programme, namely the drive for efficiency improvements (including telescope surface upgrades), the pursuit of sub-arcsecond astronomy through involvement with the Smithsonian Submillimetre Array, and the extended science available through provision of heterodyne focal plane arrays and associated backend.

Nevertheless, the Advisory Panel and Board gave approval for the conversion of RxC2 to a single channel 900 GHz receiver, RxE, as soon as possible. The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have been contracted to produce RxE, most likely with devices from SRON/RUG. Another contract has been let for a 'proof of concept' study for the MIDAS correlator. At the JAC, work to improve the efficiency of the telescope and data collection was also approved and this is described elsewhere.

Although interferometry with the CSO has regretfully had to be postponed for semester 96A due to the planned commissioning of the three new instruments, it will go ahead in 96B and invitations to participate should be made in the usual manner. The last run, in January 1996, was excellent with spectacular weather and exciting data. Noteworthy is the work at 460 GHz which is described in the later article by Richard Hills.

At the beginning of the year, I presented a project-oriented approach to a number of science projects. Information for users and quality of the facility for users rank high on the objectives for 1996. The use of the World Wide Web will increase further, and in the future, documentation will only be found on the WWW rather than any other medium. This will ensure that the documentation is accurate and up-to-date. Individual staff at the JAC are tasked with the upkeep of various sections. Furthermore, this Newsletter will now appear on the Web long before the hard-copy arrives, and in the continued search for savings, the quantity of the hard copy version of the Newsletter will be reviewed during the year.

The move towards flexible (queue) scheduling is now happening and is described later. I look to user feedback in the area of 'observing templates' to ensure that the support astronomers in Hawaii will be able to carry out the observations required, and with known priorities when decisions are required. I am well aware that this is a topic which is potentially fraught with user-dissatisfaction. I intend to proceed carefully, step by step, and fully intend to keep users 'in-the-loop'. Suggestions, particularly those which are positive and helpful in moving us to the agreed policy of queue flexible scheduling are most welcome.

This coming semester promises (yet again) to be exciting, with the commissioning of SCUBA, RxB3 and RxW. I look forward to be able to report on their progress in the next Newsletter.

Ian Robson,

Director, JCMT