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Friday 11th. 58/56F Cool, grey and windy. Back in the dome to exercise the drives with both telescopes fitted. There is something very odd about pausing at the Meridian. It twice crossed but stopped at 45° beyond with a "Meridian Crossed" message on the IH2 handset screen. It has successfully slewed 180° from E to W in Declination and back again.
Repeated the E-W slew and this time it is jerking in steps. Too rapid acceleration hitting a LF resonance? Smoothed out as it reach the Meridian. Then passed it but stopped well past it again.
Stalled several times on the reveres to east. Tried racking out the FT focuser to change the balance to tail heavy. Stopped on the Meridian this time. Never reach the eastern horizon. Manually aligned the OTAs on east and horizontal. Back to slewing to west. Jerking until it reached the Meridian. Went past then stopped at 45 past.
Today I am using C-Du-C/Skychart to drive all over the sky. I can't confirm a target is found but I'm only interested in reliability of the slews without stalling. In theory it should return to an easily confirmed position. Like east and horizontal. Instead of which it accumulates errors. Interestingly, the telescopes returned to the eastern horizon, parking position. So the drives didn't lose the plot on excursions to high and low in the north, south east and west.
I need my old down jacket. The combination of cool temperatures and wind blowing around inside the dome is unpleasant.
The dangling [work light] bulbs are very close to the dewshield on some slews. Besides looking incredibly clumsy, of course. I'll fetch the stepladder and fit some screw hooks to pull the bulbs back more neatly against the northern, inner dome surface. Bulkhead bulb holders would be better still.
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