It is a holiday Monday morning and the office is quiet. The Sun is shining over Hilo and the sky is dappled with fluffy white clouds. From one window of my office I can see almost to the summit of Mauna Kea; from another, I gaze out over the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. And so begins my tenure as the new Director JCMT. With this image in mind, let me bring you up to date on recent events at the JCMT and my plans for the future use and development of the facility.

I begin, however, by thanking Ian Robson for his sterling service to the JCMT community over his 10 years as Director. Ian has been a forceful advocate for the telescope within the PPARC system and on the international stage, and has worked very hard not only to ensure its continued viability on behalf of its users, but also to map out the long-term future of the facility. His will be a difficult act to follow. I wish him the very best of success in his new post as Deputy Director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre.

Ian described the future plans for the JCMT in the previous newsletter. Beginning in 2006, the JCMT will concentrate on wide-field astronomy with HARP-B and SCUBA-2, and will also participate in sub-arcsecond astronomy with the SMA. The goal of this transformation, while driven in part by fiscal constraints, is to ensure that the JCMT makes optimum use of its unique characteristics as the best single-dish submm facility in the world by emphasising its complementarity to ALMA. Thus the JCMT will remain a vital facility on the world stage for many years to come. My primary mandate as Director for the next five years is to manage this change and to usher in the new era of wide-field astronomy at the JCMT.

In this context, I am delighted to be able to report that the last piece in the SCUBA-2 funding jigsaw is now in place. The application by a consortium of Canadian astronomers to the Canada Foundation for Innovation for C$12.2M in support of SCUBA-2 was successful (subject to some conditions, which are currently being addressed). On behalf of the entire user community, I offer my congratulations to the consortium (of which I was a member before I accepted the Directorship!), led by Mike Fich of the University of Waterloo. This was not a straightforward exercise and the consortium worked through some difficult issues to put together an excellent proposal. A major public announcement of this award is anticipated in November. The Canadian team will be responsible for providing the warm electronics and the data reduction software for SCUBA-2, and will also make financial and personnel contributions to other aspects of the instrument, including the detector array development and fabrication; in addition, Canadian funds will be used to provide two ancillary instruments which were not part of the original SCUBA-2 design: a broadband spectrometer and a polarimeter.

The implications of this decision are profound. I anticipate that SCUBA-2 will revolutionise submm astronomy, just as SCUBA did, by providing new observational capabilities which are literally orders of magnitude better than its predecessor; and I also believe that the exciting science we expect to obtain with SCUBA-2 will constitute the strongest possible argument for the continued viability of the JCMT as the premier single-dish submm telescope in the world to 2009 and beyond.

Returning to the present, users will be aware that the JCMT was shut down for several weeks during June and July for a number of major modifications. The objectives of the work were: (a) modifications to the receiver cabin and the right Nasmyth platform in preparation for HARP-B; (b) installation and test of the K-mirror for HARP-B; (c) refurbishment of SCUBA; and (d) installation, commissioning and release of the SCUBA component of the Observatory Management Project. I am delighted to report that all of this work was satisfactorily completed: the telescope was returned to service on schedule and with all of the objectives for the shutdown period fulfilled. We are currently working with the observers and the TSSs to test and refine the new software systems. I offer my congratulations to the engineering and software teams of the JAC for their professionalism and for their management of a very complex process.

The shutdown was to be followed by 15-day period of shared-risk observations, during which the new telescope systems and each of the receivers would be recommissioned for operational use. Unfortunately, the extremely poor weather at the summit (which has persisted since April) has rendered the timely completion of these tasks impossible. The shared-risk period has therefore been extended indefinitely until the recommissioning work is completed. With any luck, this should be wrapped up by the time this Newsletter is issued; but users will be well aware that the weather is the one constraint over which we have no control.

Finally, I wish to take this opportunity to inform the community of some of my specific objectives for my tenure as Director JCMT.

The first is to enhance the reliability of the telescope system. Although this is already an imperative placed upon me by the Board, it is something I would have insisted on regardless. I am well aware of the time, effort and money that users devote to an observing run, and I am determined to minimise the occasions on which scientific programmes cannot be completed due to technical faults at the facility. Several initiatives are already underway to address this issue.

The second is to enhance the scientific productivity of the JCMT as a facility, and of the JAC as an organisation. This initiative will have some direct impacts upon observers: for instance, we will be tracking not only whether observational programmes were completed in the technical sense, but also whether scientifically useful data were obtained and whether a publication is eventually produced. I would also like to see the JAC staff, both support astronomers and TSSs, more closely involved in the science being done with the telescope, and I therefore encourage all observers to enlist the help of the JAC staff in the planning and execution of observing runs and in the analysis of data. Finally, I intend to ask all visiting observers to give a talk at the JAC before going up to HP. Although there has always been an open invitation to do so, this has traditionally been the exception rather than the rule. I hesitate to use the word "seminar" because what I have in mind is a 15-minute presentation of your observing programme: scientific rationale, observational strategy, etc. I do not believe this to be onerous, and there are many potential benefits for observers and JAC staff alike.

The third is to enhance the relationship between the JAC and the academic community from which most of its users come. One means of accomplishing this is by inviting students to spend a term or a year at the JAC, on scientific or engineering projects. The existing scheme with the University of Victoria is an excellent example of what can be accomplished in this area, and I will be looking at ways to extend the concept to other universities in the JCMT partner countries.

In addressing all of these issues, it is vital that the user perspective be taken fully into account. With this in mind, I intend (a) to interview all observers when they return to the JAC at the conclusion of their run, and (b) to spend some time at the telescope during observations. Users should also be aware that, with the change of Directorship, the Board has commissioned a review of the role of the JCMT Advisory Panel.

I conclude by assuring all observers that I intend to devote my full energies to ensuring that the JCMT maintains a standard of technical and scientific excellence second to none in the world. Now, if only I could do something about the weather.....

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