Tactical Considerations

This section describes possible tweaks that you may apply to increase the chances that your SB will be selected for observation.

Submit early:

If your priority is one of the less favorable ones (i.e, one of the higher numbers), consider creating, checking and submitting your SBs as soon as possible. You may be able to jump the queue by filling a slot before the higher priority SBs are available in the queue. This is more important if the pressure on the required LST range is high, and your priority "color" is near or above the black line in the pressure histogram for your LST range (Figure A.1).

Short SBs:

Highly ranked proposals will typically observe near their optimum LST ranges, and subsequently highly ranked proposals will leave small gaps of observing time for other proposals. The shorter your SB, the more likely it will fit in any of these gaps. Of course, slew time and calibration necessary for many shorter SBs to accumulate observing time on your targets make short SBs less efficient than long observing blocks. Scheduling your total allocation in short SBs will yield less time on source.

LST range:

As mentioned above, perhaps your priority may be such that it would be below the black line for a nearby LST range. If your scientific objectives can be met by observing in a shifted range, toward these less heavily subscribed LST ranges, it may be beneficial to your SB to specify this (extended) range in your starting conditions. Be aware of elevation and slewing effects when considering this option.

Wind:

When the absolute flux of sources is not your primary objective, you possibly wouldn't be upset if occasionally an antenna is not exactly pointed toward your source. In this case you could consider relaxing the wind limit. Your SB can then be picked while others would have to wait for more favorable wind conditions.

Atmospheric phase:

Similarly, when you expect to be able to self-calibrate your sources, you could consider observing in less phase-stable weather conditions by relaxing the atmospheric phase limits. Self-calibration would recover most of the problematic phases. However, realize that the current defaults have been chosen in order to be able to perform well enough for standard observations, and decorrelation may complicate calibration.

Move periods:

There is less pressure on dynamic time during the move periods between configurations. If your scientific objectives can be met with a less regular configuration, some missing antennas and a bit more careful data reduction, then you could ask schedsoc@nrao.edu to shift a portion of your dynamic allocation from a principal or hybrid configuration to a move period between these configurations.