Observatory: Main door framing and folded OTA.

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Thursday: A dry, pleasant day for sawing outside so I made a frame for the main doors. This required 2x4s be ripped at an angle to lie flat on the face of the octagon posts. This, in turn, provided a solid surface on which to fix vertical, larch boards to [vaguely] suggest square pillars on either side. The front corners of the octagon posts projected so had to be relieved slightly.

I also removed the ugly wooden brackets. The larch boards on either side are resting directly on the concrete anchor blocks and well fixed. So they can take over partial support duties. I had better put a bit of plastic DPC under the boards. I shall bolt new brackets to the original cut-outs in the cladding ply but on a different face of the octagon posts.

By the time I had cleared up it was too dark for available light photography. More images tomorrow. Hopefully when I have mitered and fixed the outside "skirting boards" and darkened all the wood with the Safe-way treatment. Weather permitting.

Friday was the exact reverse of the forecast. Dry in the morning wet afternoon. First I worked on the main doors.

Then I replaced the straight tube version of the 7" for the more compact folded OTA. Not as straightforward as it sounds thanks to height, weight and bulk involved.

The heavy objective had to come off and be fitted to the folded OTA's front bayonet plate. Then the rotating 2" Vixen focuser had to be moved over to the other backplate. I made a start on collimation but didn't have a torch handy to illuminate the Cheshire EP. The image was a quick snap using flash. I didn't even manage to get it upright. The 6" wouldn't fit beside the cradle due to a lack of space. So it had to come off too.

My lack of clear priorities made an evening of variable cloud cover a bit of a farce. I had to remove a 5kg counterweight because the 6" was no longer attached. Easily said, but not easily done. Then I couldn't get AWR-ASCOM to work again. Only a brief glimpse of a scope cursor but it wouldn't allow me to Sync. Then it disappeared altogether and tracking went with it. After struggling for a while I gave up and went back to the AWR handset. Gotos make a finder unnecessary. No Gotos make one essential!

Mars was very low, colourful and soft again. The collimation on the folded 7" was well off. Not having a finder didn't help. The lack of adequate work lights meant the torch had to be used repeatedly again. Whoever decided to put a ring of small text around the Meade 4000 series eyepieces should never be allowed to work in the industry ever again. Countless lives rush past while searching for the tiny focal length details buried in the completely pointless text.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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