14.01.2020 Wet and very windy weather!

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14.01.2020 A grey, rather windy day. A storm over the UK means south westerly gusts to 45mph are expected locally in the early hours of Wednesday. I had better point the dome shutters that way! Better the shutters be pressed onto the dome than potentially sucked off by pointing them downwind.

15.01.2020 Another grey, wet day with overnight gales reducing. The dome is still there. With the surrounding trees still rocking back and forth in the background. Despite the eight hold down disks I always feel the need for anchors high on the dome. For ratchet, hold down straps leading down to the massive pier.

Not only does the pier have at least 12 meters of hefty, 4"x4" timber, but a couple of square meters of dense, 18mm, ply cladding. It has at least one hundred kilograms of massive equatorial mounting, counterweights and telescopes on top. Plus four, large and heavy, pyramidal, concrete foundation blocks, buried in very firm, self-compacting sand & gravel.

If the dome can get enough lift to move that lot, then there is probably little hope of survival of the observatory as a whole! I had better find some serious eye bolts to fit high on the dome ribs or even the top cross board. To hold the top hooks of the hold downs traps. The lower hooks can go under the pier's 3/4" plywood cladding. This has more than enough fixing screws to resist any likely lift. The cladding is topped by multi-laminated ply top board to support the mounting. The board is fixed down to a frame of 4x4s.

17.01.2020 Friday. 44F. Unusually bright start to the day. Though lots of thick, high cloud. As the only mounted telescope, I had to realign the folded 7" to see the sun in white light. "White" being the operative word. The sun is very soft and misty. Completely without detail.  The weak point about the folded refractor is the tightly fitting, plastic caps I use to protect the flat mirrors. They move the mirrors as I pull off their caps. Not clever!

The SE wind is also blowing straight into the observatory. Making it feel very cold despite the watery sunshine and relatively mild temperatures for midwinter. No point in even trying a camera given the conditions. It is supposed to cloud over at lunch time. There are not even sharp shadows on the wall from the edges of the open observation slit.

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