The 'Technical Justification' page allows the Principal Investigator to specify a detailed technical justification for the observations requested. This section generally includes text describing in detail (i) why you have selected the specified instrumentation configuration and observing strategy, and (ii) support for the integration times specified (e.g. in terms of obtaining a particular signal:noise level).
The length of the technical justification should follow existing NRAO guidelines.
The 'Technical Justification' page is divided into two areas, at the top there is a white area, entitled the TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATION TEXT section, which will include the text of the technical justification, while below it is an area entitled the ATTACHMENTS section. In the TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATION TEXT section there are five icon buttons, from left to right, 'Open', 'Save', 'Cut', 'Copy' and 'Paste'. Click on the above links for information on using these buttons.
To define the TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATION TEXT you have two options:
Option 1 is to click in the large white TECHNICAL JUSTIFICATION TEXT box and type in your technical justification text.
Option 2 is to include a previously prepared justification from an ASCII/text file. To include text from a file click on the 'Open' button. A window will appear entitled 'Open' and will list the contents of the current directory. Navigate through your directory structure using the 'Up' and 'Home' buttons or by double-clicking on the green folder icon next to the folder name. Once you have located the file containing the justification select it by clicking (once) on it and click the 'Open' button at the bottom right of the 'Open' window or double-click on the file icon next to the name. The text from that file will be included in the white text area of the justification. To manipulate the text in the abstract box, use the 'Cut', 'Copy' and 'Paste' buttons on the 'Technical Justification' page.
References (to items included on the technical justification page) should be included in at the bottom of the technical justification page. References should be explicitly referenced in the text (e.g. Smith et al. 1992).
Many researchers are used to writing their technical justification (and other sections of proposals) in a TeX/LaTeX form using embedded TeX/LaTex commands. This is acceptable, however these commands will not be processed by the tool.
You can also attach files e.g. figures, images, etc or previously acquired data) to the technical justification using the lower section on the 'Technical Justification' page called ATTACHMENTS. Currently, the supported formats for attachments are EPS (encapsulated postscript files), GIF and JPEG (image format files), PDF (Adobe portable data format files), RTF (rich text format files), PS (postscript files) and TEXT (simple ASCII/text) files. To define an attachment click on the 'New Attachment' button. Select the file format to be attached using the 'File Type' drop-down menu , click in the white 'Name' box and type in a reference name for the file (e.g. Figure 1) attached and type in the file name (including directory structure) in the white "File Path" text box. Alternatively, instead of typing in the file path, click 'Choose'. This displays a small window called 'Add' which allows you to interactively locate the file you want to attach. Once defined, the attachment appears in the green window directly below the ATTACHMENTS heading.
To remove a previously defined attachment (say you attached the wrong file), highlight the attachment to be removed in the area directly below the ATTACHMENTS heading (highlighted files appear green) and click the 'Delete Attachment' button.