23.4.19

23rd April 2019 Gales!

*

Yet another clear, bright day but spoilt by easterly gales with gusts up to 21m/s [45mph]. With the early sun in the east there is a potential danger of blowing up the dome if the shutters are wide open to the wind. Yesterday the dome rotated on its own when a sudden gust caught the open shutters at 90°.  The dome cannot lift because of the hold down disks beside each, of eight, supporting rollers. Why take a chance with the wind when the sun is bereft of interest at the moment?

I shall work on the mounting and tracking instead. I don't need the dome open to slew between Polaris and the parking position. Further fine tuning of the balance won't do any harm and will keep me out of mischief.

In fact my visit to the dome was very short lived. I turned the firmly closed shutters into the wind and retreated from the racket the wind was making. Mostly caused by the rubber skirt flapping hard against the building and the plastic upstand.

24th  Now overcast and still windy but reduced from yesterday's gales. The promised overnight rain must have missed us as we head into another 9/10 drought warning. With brown dust clouds hanging over the fields.

Now it is more comfortable in the dome I can hopefully return to sorting out the Goto slew overshoots. Hours passed this morning without Goto progress until I discovered that C-Du_C had not updated the time since at least the Summer time change. Ticking "Use System Time" and restarting the laptop and AWR solved that problem. Later I reached the parking position from a paddle driven centring and Sync on the Sun. Is this the beginning of the end for my endless Goto problems? Who knows? 

*

No comments: