Cycle 7 VLBI Acceptance Report

Abstract

This report summarizes the acceptance process for VLBI which was carried out in early 2020 in preparation for the 2020 VLBI Campaigns. Even though the ALMA operations are suspended, the EHTC campaign has been cancelled, and the GMVA is going forwards without ALMA, it is still a useful exercise to report on the Acceptance testing that was done. This is especially true since (for a variety of reasons) the testing was more extensive this past January. It has also been several years since the initial Acceptance of VLBI for Cycle 4, and new features are finally to become available in Cycle 8, so it is reasonable to capture the state of things at this time. Going forward, it has been suggested as desirable for the Acceptance be added to the normal ALMA Acceptance process. This report thus serves to detail the sort of checks that can and should be made in the future. Some Action items are also noted for the near term. On the bright side, the system was totally ready. This report reviews the setup and on-site checks that can be made in a stand-alone ( no co-observing peers) mode. Then we present results from four VLBI sessions. For each, a CASA reduction is compared with a reduction of the VLBI data which (in three of the four cases) are correlated with participating EHTC sites.