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Reminders

A handbook (``The 30m Manual'') collecting most of the information necessary to plan 30-m telescope observations is available [10]. The report entitled ``Calibration of spectral line data at the IRAM 30m telescope'' explains in detail the applied calibration procedure. Both documents can be retrieved through the IRAM Granada web pages (http://www.iram.es). A catalog of well calibrated spectra for a range of sources and transitions (Mauersberger et al. [13]) is very useful for monitoring spectral line calibration.

The On-the-Fly observing mode (OTF) is available for heterodyne observations since more than two years. Considerable progress was made in making the control of the observations and the data reduction user friendly. Documentation is available on the web (http://www.iram.es). Due to the complexity of the OTF observing mode we advise proposers without a demonstrated experience of this technique on the 30m telescope to contact, or involve in their proposal, an astronomer with such experience. David Teyssier of the Granada staff (e-mail: teyssier@iram.es) serves as the principal contact in OTF matters.

Frequency switching is available. There is still little experience of frequency-switching with the new-generation receivers A100 and A230. With the ``old'' receivers, it yields satisfactory baselines within certain limitations (maximum frequency throw of 45 km/s, backends, phase times etc.; for details see [8]). At present, up to 3 receivers can be frequency switched simultaneously. Baselines are ordinarily flatter when using one single receiver.

Many proposals underestimate the time needed to carry out their observations, even under excellent weather conditions. We ask you to pay special attention to this matter as a serious time underestimate may be considered as evidence for insufficient proposal preparation.

Finally, to help us keeping up a computerized source list, we ask you to fill in your `list of objects' as explained before.



guelin@iram.fr