2005 Radio, Millimeter, Submillimeter Group (RMSPG)
Minutes of telecon 07Feb05

Present: John Carlstrom, Neal Evans, Martha Haynes, Ken Kellermann,
Al Marscher, Jim Moran, Steve Myers, Mark Reid and Jack Welch

1. Status of facility reports:
   MH has transmitted the draft HTML files to all facility/project
   contacts. Deadline for edits is this Friday 2/11 at noon. Further
   edits will be possible, but the intention is to make the web page
   containing links public on Feb 15th, to coincide with the presentation
   briefing on our activity to the AAAC (see 3 below).

2. Subcommittee reports:
   a. Science: Neal reported that he needs input still from several
      members, who agreed to try to get things to him as soon as possible.
      Everyone may comment/contribute based on current (incomplete) draft.
   b. Technology: 
      Ken has circulated a draft and is receiving comments.
   c. Facilities Matrix:
      Mark has received some comments and is working further. He
      welcomes further input. Neal will be at CfA later this week and 
      they will discuss Neal's efforts to provide a plot that 
      addresses issues of mapping speed. John suggested that one 
      benchmark could be A*Omega.
   d. Synergies:
      Alan has circulated a first draft and welcomes input, especially
      regarding star formation and planets.
   e. Facilities:
      Don and Ken have been corresponding by email (Don was
      absent from telecon).
   
   It is very important that we move this forward, so everyone
   promised to be extra diligent this week.

3. Presentation to AAAC on 2/15:
   As discussed previously, the RMSPG is on the AAAC agenda for a
   30 minute slot next Tuesday 2/15 at NSF. The DOE will be officially 
   included in the AAAC discussions as of the upcoming AAAC meeting.
   MH had circulated overnight a preliminary, 1st draft presentation;
   this draft and what is needed to finish it was discussed at some length. 
   Specific items included in the discussion were:
   a) NASA's interest in spacecraft tracking with the VLBA.
   b) The US has the world's foremost facilities for centimeter wavelength
      astronomy, but not for mm/submm astronomy. ALMA will of
      course give a great boost. In fact, mm/submm astronomy is
      maturing at the present time, from the facility perspective. 
   c) The HSA = High Sensitivity Array from VLBI needs explanation.
   d) In the future, we should be able to image the SMBH's around
      SgrA*, M87 and CenA at the Schwarzschild radius scale.
   e) The CMB Task Force is scheduled to report to the AAAC next week.
      We should not duplicate their efforts. We know that our current list
      of CMB projects is very incomplete, so we have to figure out
      how to present the overall efforts without appearing to endorse
      only selected projects.
   f) There is substantial overlap with NASA at least in technology
      development of mutual interest. Examples include large format
      bolometer arrays, focal plane arrays, large N telescopes (DSN).
      These will be documented.
   g) Jim Ulvestad and Jim Cordes with others (including Leo Blitz, Namir
      Kassim, Colin Lonsdale and Rick Perley) have had a discussion about
      the relationship of various projects (ATA, EVLA, LWA, MWA and the
      DSN) to one another and to the SKA. They plan to draft a white paper 
      by the end of this month on their thoughts as leaders of the 
      various projects and hope that we will consider it as community input.
   MH will circulate further drafts of the AAAC presentation as the week
   progresses and welcomes further input.

4. We will hold a face-to-face meeting of the RMSPG to discuss our draft
   on March 4th in Washington. In the absence of NSF support for this meeting,
   AUI has agreed to host it, as per our request.

5. The Feb 21st teleconference is cancelled, but we will try to reschedule
   for Mon Feb 28th at 12 noon.