Category: Status Reports

Status, early afternoon November 6th.
Dennis Wingo: Things are going well today, capturing some tapes, up to M5-017 now. Will do a full update at the end of the day…..
In listening to the audio track the Madrid guys are admitting that they had problems with the FR-900 that caused the blank tapes from the day before…
oops.
Status end of day November 6, 2013.
Things are moving well with the Madrid tapes. We have finished M5-022 so we are about 15% through the Madrid tapes in three days. That’s the good news. The bad news is that M2-M5 and M8 had no data on them. There was a problem with the FR-900 machine that was not detected by the ground station operator. This is probably not that bad as these images were captured at the end of the Madrid tape run. We will know when we get through the tapes if we lost any images.
Tapes through today.
M5-001, no image data, a test tape.
M5-002, no signal
M5-003, no signal
M5-004, no signal
M5-005, no signal
M5-006, LOV-018M, 8 framelets, completes image
M5-007, not needed, overlaps with G5-010
M5-008, no signal
M5-009, partial capture LOV-027M, 028H
M5-010, complete capture LOV-026M, 027H, partial capture 025M
M5-010 is a special capture, duplicate of the Earth Image from a Goldstone tape.
M5-011, partial capture LOV-029M, complete capture 030H
M5-012, partial capture LOV-028M, 029H
M5-013, partial capture LOV-029H, complete capture 027M, 028H
M5-014, not needed, overlap with G5-015,016
M5-015, partial capture LOV-044H
M5-016, partial capture LOV-044H, 043H, complete capture 042M
M5-017, partial capture LOV-046M, 047H
M5-018, partial capture LOV-047H (completes image)
M5-019, complete capture LOV-045M, partial capture 046H
M5-020, not needed Overlap with G5-023
M5-021, partial capture LOV-044H (completes image with overlap of W5-028)
M5-022, partial capture LOV-042M, 043H
Lots of short captures but some long ones too. Making pretty good progress and hope to keep it up the rest of this week. I would like to have Lunar Orbiter V done by Thanksgiving but I am moving that week! Yikes!

Status, afternoon November 5, 2013.
Dennis Wingo: Started capturing tapes today! M5-006 just needed about 8 frame lets captured which are in the can now. This is going to be interesting because I speculate that this will be the norm with Madrid tapes, not the exception.
End of the day today, November 5, 2013.
Got through M5-010 today. Only captured two fairly long captures and one of them is a duplicate of LOV-027 to see if the Madrid capture of the Earth looks better than the Goldstone capture.
Just kinda getting started today and we had another tape with no signal on it. Bizarre….
Details tomorrow.

Status, end of day November 4, 2013
Dennis Wingo: Well we ran four tapes today, with not one frame let captured. It looks like M2-M5 have no signal on them. There are test signals from the calibration at the start of the tape and there is a control track signal and audio, but no video signal at all…..
Finally found a signal when we got to tape M6.
Will start capturing image data from that tape in the morning. We don’t know if it is an error when they originally recorded the tape or not but it does point in that direction…….
Don’t know what images we lost yet but will figure it out in the morning….

Status Friday Afternoon November 1, 2013.
Dennis Wingo: Well it looks like the repaired head shipped today. Will have it Monday morning. Hopefully it works this time and we can start running tape!
Also, we have a treat coming soon….

Dennis Wingo: Back at doing some clean up tape capture today. We had a tape that would not run before due to control track problems that ran fine today (G5-067). I am going to rerun G5-004 to see if the loss of signal about ten minutes into the tape is permanent. If it is, more than likely there is overlap with a Madrid tape on this one. I still need to give the images numbers on tapes 137-158 and will do that in a bit. Here is what came off of G5-067
G5-067, partial capture LOV-213M, complete capture 214H
G5-136, partial capture LOV-050M, complete capture 051H
G5-137, complete capture LOV-049M, 050H
G5-138, partial capture LOV-045M, complete capture 046H
G5-139, partial capture LOV-046M, complete capture 047H
G5-140, partial capture LOV-048M, complete capture 049H
G5-141, partial capture LOV-047M, complete capture 048H
G5-142, partial capture LOV-044M, 045H
G5-143, not captured, overlap with W5-151
G5-144, partial capture LOV-041M
G5-145, partial capture LOV-045H
G5-146, partial capture LOV-044M, 045H (duplicate with G5-142)
G5-147, partial capture LOV-045H
Break in the record for a second.
I just figured out what happened that had been confusing me before. It seems that the Lunar Orbiter flight team had backed up the film and rerecorded some images between G5-142 and G5-147! The numbers don’t make any sense otherwise!
G5-147′, partial capture LOV-028H (duplicate tape number but different image!!)
G5-148, partial capture LOV-026M, 025M, complete capture 027H
G5-149, partial capture LOV-025M (completes image), complete capture 026H
G5-150, not captured, overlap with W5-11
G5-151, partial capture LOV-024H (overlap with W5-008,W5-011)
G5-152, not captured, overlap with W5-009
G5-153, partial capture LOV-022H
G5-154, partial capture LOV-020, complete capture 021H (overlap with W5-006-007)
G5-155, partial captur eLOV-019M (overlap with G5-010-011)
G5-156, not captured, overlap with W5-162, G5-011)
G5-157, partial capture LOV-017M (overlap with W5-162, 163)
G5-158, complete capture LOV-017H, partial capture 015M
This completes the Lunar Orbiter V Goldstone captures.
I went back to re-record G5-004 and it has no signal after the first 41 frame lets, about 40 minutes of signal lost. Probably get the framelets on a Madrid tape.

Dennis Wingo: Status, Friday evening September 20, 2013. We are in the process of clearing our backlog of processed tapes. There is a tremendous amount of extremely tedious work that Austin has to do in organizing and processing the raw image scans into framelets first, then into images. We are going to stand down for a few days on capturing images while we catch up some.
Here is the stack of tapes from Woomera and Goldstone completed from Lunar Orbiter V. The second stack are the remaining tapes, all from Madrid, that have to be processed.
We have a couple of cool images that we have processed that we will show next week! — at McMoons.
Click on images to enlarge

Dennis Wingo: Status End of Day Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Well got more done today! We just finished capturing G5-148, meaning we have ten more Goldstone tapes to go!
Among the images captured today was the Earth image of LOV-027H. It should look mega cool with our processing that we have now.
One big darn headache that took forever to sort out today is that Goldstone not only quit putting sequence numbers on the tapes, they must have forgotten two tapes after G5-136 and numbered them for the following day as G5-146 and G5-147′. That single quote is for G5-147 prime as it is normally known. So we have TWO TAPES labeled G5-147! It looks like the operator of the FR-900 had a bad day or two. The only way to figure these things out is to actually watch every darn frame let and figure out where the end of frames are. No two high res or medium res images start or end on the same framlet, thanks to how the resolution charts were imprinted on the film.
So, I will list the images in the morning. Going for wine now!

Dennis Wingo: Status Tuesday September 17, 2013.
Lots going on today, here are the images since tape G5-114.
G5-115, complete capture LOV-100M, 101H
G5-116, partial capture LOV-099M, 098M completes 099M (overlap here with W5-38, only needed to capture a couple of framelets from each image)
G5-117, partial capture LOV-098M, 099H (completes images) (overlap with W5-038 and W5-124)
G5-119, partial capture LOV-096M (completes image) (overlap with W5-126, 127)
G5-120, not needed, overlap with W5-128
G5-121, not needed overlap with W5-036, W5-129
G5-122, partial capture LOV-079M, 080H
G5-123, not needed, overlap with W5-032
G5-124, partial capture LOV-078H (completes image, overlaps with W5-033)
G5-125, partial capture LOV-076M, complete capture 077H
G5-126, partial capture LOV-075M, complete capture 076H
G5-127, partial capture LOV-074M, complete capture 075H (some overlap with W5-031)
G5-128, complete capture LOV-073M, 074H, partial capture 072M
G5-129, partial capture LOV-072M (completes image), complete capture 073H
Those are all of the ones captured last Friday. Below is what was captured on Monday.
G5-130, partial capture LOV-071M (completes image) (overlaps with W5-029)
G5-131, partial capture LOV-071H (completes image) (overlaps with W5-030)
G5-132, partial capture LOV-069M (completes image) (overlaps with G5-032, W5-139
G5-133, not needed, overlaps with G5-033, W5-140
G5-134, not needed, overlaps with W5-141,142
G5-135, partial capture LOV-054H, 053H, complete capture 052M
G5-136, partial capture LOV-050M, 051H (completes both images with an overlap with G5-027. G5-136 framelets are duplicates of G5-027
This is where we are at this morning. Will be back at capturing this afternoon but with no sequence numbers I have to run tape that I can’t capture in order to figure out what images I have the old fashioned way, by looking at the framelets and then comparing with the images in the LPI database. This is not as easy as it sounds as there are many images missing from LOV at LPI.

Dennis Wingo: Status, end of day, September 16, 2013
My head hurts. When NASA was doing the priority readout of the LOV images, they did a lot more of them than on the previous missions. It looks like they did more early in the mission than later in the mission. Thus today has been an exercise in checking out each tape that we do against previous captures of Goldstone and Woomera tapes now. We do this as every minute we save of head life means another tape that we could capture.
I have captured some data that is a duplication and I don’t want to do it. Another issue is that some of our tapes have not been processed yet so I have to refer to my notes a lot.
Making things WORSE on us is the fact that JPL quit putting the sequence numbers on the tape which has been our ONLY WAY to reference what was on the tapes without comparing the times that the machine was one for each site which bless em they still put the TIME CAPTURED on the tapes. However, for these overlaps it does not work as the times are not correlated so I have to play each tape, at least the first couple and the last couple of framelets, figure out what sequence number the tape actually is from, and then measure that against my paperwork from the LOV photo addendum record.
That is why my head hurts. I need coffee.
The bottom line is that though we have captured little data today, we are through tape G5-136. So that means 21 tapes to go for Goldstone!

Dennis Wingo: – Status, end of day Friday September 13, 2013.
A very productive day today. I am currently finishing up G5-129, yep that is 15 tapes today. Some only needed a few framelets and a couple I did not have to run at all but that is still a heck of a lot of work. Since August 18th we have process 249 tapes, representing almost 5,000 lbs of tape product moved twice. I will post the tape to image numbers when I can….
Here is a picture of the tape pile for LOV as it continues to grow.
There is a reason that we are getting more head life. One is that since we don’t really have to play these tapes again we have the heads “dig” into the tapes with more pressure, allowing a worn head to still provide signal. Another factor is that the head that these tapes were made on was worn itself as they record what the tip size is so that we can tell that. So a couple of lucky breaks plus knowing how to finagle the last bit of head life has helped us along. Click on image to enlarge.

Dennis Wingo: – Status, end of day Thursday September 12, 2013.
A pretty productive day today. Made it through G5-114 (playing now) today. Pretty good overlaps today and some long runs.
G5-103, partial capture LOV-129M, complete capture 130H
G5-104, partial capture LOV-128M (completes image overlap with W5-047
G5-105, not needed overlap with W5-048
G5-106, partial capture LOV-126M (just a few framelets, overlaps with W5-048,049
G5-107, complete capture LOV-126H (overlaps with W5-050 slightly)
G5-108, partial cpature LOV-124M, complete capture 125H (slight overlap with W5-113 and overlap with W5-044,045)
G5-109, not needed overlap with W5-113, W5-045
G5-110, partial capture LOV-122M (completes image with overlap between W5-113,114
G5-111, partial capture LOV-106H, complete capture 104M, 105H
G5-112, partial capture LOV-103M, complete capture 104H
G5-113, partial capture LOV-102M, complete capture 103H
G5-114, partial capture LOV-101M, complete capture 102H
Another marathon day and another miracle of the head holding out…..
43 tapes (G5-145 is already done) left for Goldstone. Will we make it?
– Status, mid morning September 12, 2013
Running tape today, and am on death watch for the head. If we get through today it will be a miracle! Am running tape G5-104 right now and so far so good. The control track head, which is a second head on the head assembly used for servo control is on its last legs as well so methinks that when this head is done, it is done for good….
Here are the tapes done yesterday.
G5-092, partial capture LOV-157H (completes image, overlaps with M5-48,49, only captured 10 framelets)
G5-093, not captured, overlap with M5-049
G5-094, partial capture LOV-154M, complete capture 155H
G5-095, partial capture LOV-153M, complete capture 154H
G5-096, partial capture LOV-152M, partial capture 153H (completes image, overlaps with W5-099)
G5-097, partial capture LOV-151M (completes image, overlaps with W5-100,101)
G5-098, partial capture LOV-135H, 134H, complete capture 133M
G5-099, partial capture LOV-134H (completes image)
G5-100, partial capture LOV-132M, complete capture 133H
G5-101, partial capture LOV-131M, complete capture 132H
G5-102, partial capture LOV-130M, complete capture 131H
This is all for yesterday, got a lot of framelets captured yesterday and have now finished 104H.