Date: 24 May 1996

Request By: Julie Saba

Title: Standard operating procedures during 2-month continuous contact period

Reason: Routine and contingency instructions for 2 month contact, when MDI is 
running in continuous dynamics mode with high-rate data, to simplify operations
and improve science quality.

Description:  MDI has already submitted an OCD for one hour of VC2 data every 
12 hours (+/- 1 hour) during this period.  This OCD augments that one.

(1) Twice daily, at 12-hour intervals, it is required to downlink the LOI 
circular buffers in MDI.  It is preferable but not required to perform this 
downlink during the daily VC2 periods, either at the beginning or 7 minutes 
from the end.  The dump is done via the TSTOL procedure M_FL_LOIDUMP, which 
takes approximately 5 minutes.

(2) In the event of a transition to idle during this period, it is required to
get the MDI instrument back into dynamics mode with high-rate data as soon as 
pssible, by means of the TSTOL procedure K_IDTOMH.

(Note this is a change from our usual policy, when we are not in continuous 
dynamics mode)