NRAO UC 2024
As was the case last year and the year before, one of the responsibilities I agreed to this year was to serve on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory User's Committee, the independent panel that comments on various policies, practices, and plans that might affect their scientific user base. This year was different, though, because instead of occurring at NRAO Headquarters in Charlottesville they would be having the meeting at one of the observatory sites - specifically, Green Bank, West Virginia.
Green Bank is a tiny town (in fact hardly a town at all) in the remote mountains of West Virginia, and getting there is not simple. There's no airport, no train, no bus and no interstate; the only practical means to get there is by driving (about four hours from Dulles airport). I'd initially been hoping to carpool, but nobody responded to my request which meant that I'd be responsible for getting there myself - the first significant solo roadtrip of mine in a decade, and I'd be doing it after an international flight!
I'd been somewhat nervous about it, but I tried to control what best I was able: I stayed in an airport hotel in London, slept in as late as I could, and tried ro relax on the flight over. The rental car pickup was quick, and thankfully the drive was uneventful and really quite scenic: while West Virginia's mountains can't compare to the Rockies, the lush vegetation and network of rivers have their own charm. At the same time it felt almost eerie to see so much life and so few people, but at least that meant there were few others on the roads.
I got in at about 9pm to discover that - as I'd half-expected - I would not be able to connect to the internet, since wi-fi is banned in the valley as part of the strict (although not strictly enforced) rules against interfering radio signals. I couldn't turn the TV on to watch hockey either (in this case, the remote was out of battery) so I just went to sleep, which I was certainly tired enough for. (The next day they gave me an ethernet adaptor to borrow to get online the "old-fashioned" way.)
The meeting went more or less along the lines of last year - lots of presentations, some questions from the committee; I didn't get too involved in any of the livelier discussions as most of the things I had strong opinions about did not come up this year or had been discussed exhaustively in past years anyway and there wasn't too much sense returning to them. My family connection felt bit more awkward than usual, particularly at one occasion where I did make a point regarding the VLA's 2010-era upgrade and the observatory director pointed out (possibly in jest) that "of course" the son of the project scientist of the project I was defending against some criticism would speak in support of it. (Not a coincidence, but it still felt weird.)
A highlight of the visit was getting to tour the Green Bank Telescope itself, the major facility at the site. This is a truly massive structure, a 100-meter diameter radio dish that is the largest moveable telescope in the world. I'd seen it and toured it once before - when it was under construction, but that was in the 1990s and I'd not been back since. It's a thing that messes with your sense of scale - one has to go up the equivalent of 20 stories just to get to the base of the thing, and then another 20 to get to the surface, and another 20 to the top of the feed arm. And the whole thing moves to be able to point across the whole sky! (Not while we were touring it, of course).
Green Bank is so small it has almost no restaurants, so breakfast and lunch and dinner were generally just in the observatory cafeteria, although on the second day we were taken to a local ski area (about 30-40 minutes away) to eat at the nice restaurant there, which was quite nice and had some great beers as well. I would have liked to explore the area further, but the meeting was tightly scheduled and on Wednesday after our write-up and present session I had to skedaddle back to the airport to catch my flight out. Despite me worrying about the timing I reached the rental car return in plenty of time before my flight, and had plenty of time to unwind in the airport before the flight (which was delayed anyway) back to the UK.
Green Bank is a tiny town (in fact hardly a town at all) in the remote mountains of West Virginia, and getting there is not simple. There's no airport, no train, no bus and no interstate; the only practical means to get there is by driving (about four hours from Dulles airport). I'd initially been hoping to carpool, but nobody responded to my request which meant that I'd be responsible for getting there myself - the first significant solo roadtrip of mine in a decade, and I'd be doing it after an international flight!
I'd been somewhat nervous about it, but I tried to control what best I was able: I stayed in an airport hotel in London, slept in as late as I could, and tried ro relax on the flight over. The rental car pickup was quick, and thankfully the drive was uneventful and really quite scenic: while West Virginia's mountains can't compare to the Rockies, the lush vegetation and network of rivers have their own charm. At the same time it felt almost eerie to see so much life and so few people, but at least that meant there were few others on the roads.
I got in at about 9pm to discover that - as I'd half-expected - I would not be able to connect to the internet, since wi-fi is banned in the valley as part of the strict (although not strictly enforced) rules against interfering radio signals. I couldn't turn the TV on to watch hockey either (in this case, the remote was out of battery) so I just went to sleep, which I was certainly tired enough for. (The next day they gave me an ethernet adaptor to borrow to get online the "old-fashioned" way.)
The meeting went more or less along the lines of last year - lots of presentations, some questions from the committee; I didn't get too involved in any of the livelier discussions as most of the things I had strong opinions about did not come up this year or had been discussed exhaustively in past years anyway and there wasn't too much sense returning to them. My family connection felt bit more awkward than usual, particularly at one occasion where I did make a point regarding the VLA's 2010-era upgrade and the observatory director pointed out (possibly in jest) that "of course" the son of the project scientist of the project I was defending against some criticism would speak in support of it. (Not a coincidence, but it still felt weird.)
A highlight of the visit was getting to tour the Green Bank Telescope itself, the major facility at the site. This is a truly massive structure, a 100-meter diameter radio dish that is the largest moveable telescope in the world. I'd seen it and toured it once before - when it was under construction, but that was in the 1990s and I'd not been back since. It's a thing that messes with your sense of scale - one has to go up the equivalent of 20 stories just to get to the base of the thing, and then another 20 to get to the surface, and another 20 to the top of the feed arm. And the whole thing moves to be able to point across the whole sky! (Not while we were touring it, of course).
Green Bank is so small it has almost no restaurants, so breakfast and lunch and dinner were generally just in the observatory cafeteria, although on the second day we were taken to a local ski area (about 30-40 minutes away) to eat at the nice restaurant there, which was quite nice and had some great beers as well. I would have liked to explore the area further, but the meeting was tightly scheduled and on Wednesday after our write-up and present session I had to skedaddle back to the airport to catch my flight out. Despite me worrying about the timing I reached the rental car return in plenty of time before my flight, and had plenty of time to unwind in the airport before the flight (which was delayed anyway) back to the UK.