What is new?

The telecope is now being operated under a new control system (NCS). Although allmost all features available under the old control system are already operational in the NCS, a small number of restrictions still hold. Most visibly, the only coordinate system fully supported by the NCS now is equatorial J2000.0, and we request observers to use this system for their source coordinates and offsets. Source offsets can be in the Equatorial J2000.0 system, projection``radio''; in the``true angle'' horizontal system; and in the Nasmyth system (receiver offsets). SET ANGLE UNIT other than [arcsec] is no yet supported. The ``Raster'' command is still not available. OTF, ONOFF or TRACKING (with frequency switching) commands together with SIC loops should be used instead. Observations with the rotated wobbler which are of interest for bolometer mapping, are in preparation. Remote observing is not yet implemented, so astronomers are asked to travel to the observatory, or in case of short and straightforward observations, consider service observing. The NCS team makes a strong effort to maintain a web page (../IRAMES/ncs30m) where the current status is described. The dual polarization HERA is operational together with its backends for high (VESPA) and low spectral resolution (WILMA, 4 MHz filters). Although tuning parameters are now available for a large range of frequencies, it is still recommended to send us HERA frequencies in advance. HERA observations will be organized as an observing pool similar to the bolometer observations. Like last semester, a bolometer array, preferentially the 117-channel MAMBO II, which should be used for observing time estimates, will be available.