Proposal Section

The Proposals Tab allows you to manage your proposals. Your proposals will be kept in a database so that you may save them and return to editing them at a later time. In order to protect your proposal information, a username and password are required to gain entry to the PST.

Each proposal is edited by entering information into a series of sections, listed in a tree structure on the left side of the page. Each section is devoted to a single aspect of the proposal.

Partially completed proposals may be saved within the PST, even with errors and/or length over-runs, allowing authors to complete their proposals at their leisure. Once the proposal is complete, it may be submitted to NRAO from within the tool. Proposals may also be withdrawn up until the proposal deadline.

If your PST web session is quiet (i.e., no server activity) for 30 minutes or more the system will automatically log you out. To resume working on the proposal, simply log back in and start editing the proposal again.

You will also be able to copy proposals previously submitted with the PST, either to revise them for resubmission during another proposal cycle, or to serve as templates for new proposals. If desired you may specify which sections to copy from a previously submitted proposal. However, if Resources for a given telescope have been changed so that and old proposal's Resources are incompatible with a new proposal deadline, then one may not copy Resources from an old proposal.

Once you have logged in and clicked on the Proposal tab, you will be presented with a list of your proposals with search and filtering options on the left-hand side. To the right will be a table consisting of the proposal name, legacy ID, title, P.I. name, submitted date, and status. Within the proposal column there exists icons to delete, validate, copy, print, submit or withdraw the proposal.

To edit a proposal, click on its highlighted title. To start a new proposal, click on the New Proposal'' button, then select the type of proposal you are creating (VLA, GBT, VLBA/HSA, or GMVA). You will be returned to the proposal list where you will find a new link representing a new, blank proposal. To edit it, click on its highlighted title.

At this point, you will be in proposal editing mode. On the left will be a tree structure with your proposals and under each proposal are links to different sections of the proposal. Each link represents a major category of proposal information. The sections are:

General: Title, abstract, proposal type, etc.
Authors: List of authors and contact information.
Scientific Justification: Scientific justification.
Technical Justification: Technical justification.
Sources: Source positions and velocities.
Resources: Resource information, which can be GBT-specific: back ends, receivers, modes, etc.; VLA-specific: receivers, special back ends, correlator modes, etc.; or VLBA/HSA or GMVA-specific: antennas, receivers, bit rates, processing, etc. This will depend upon the type of proposal being created.
Sessions: Describes the amount of time requested, and how it should be divided amongst the various sources and resources. For most simple observations, each session represents a contiguous block of observing time, and the sum of the times for all sessions is the total requested observing time.
Student Support: Information for financial support requests for students at U.S. universities or colleges. Starting with Semester 2013B (1 February 2013 deadline) the PST will not be used to submit Student Observing Support (SOS) request but an online application system will be used to collect SOS proposals from successful PIs.

To move between the sections, simply click on the desired link, or use the page-forward and back buttons on the right-hand side of the page.