28.01.2021 How long is a piece of wood?

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Thursday 28th 29F, hard frost with occasional sunshine.

I can hardly believe it, but I have made a huge mistake. My two days of exhausting excavations, for foundation blocks and burying them has gone horribly awry. 

Guess who used the wrong spacer stick? Correct! The blocks were all spaced at 75cm instead of 85cm. I have corrected two blocks but am still too unwell to press on with excavating the others. Particularly with the ground surface now rock hard from days of frost. With many more forecast into February. 

I have looked at potential short cuts to avoid digging up every single block all over again. It doesn't help. There is no point in moving any backwards slightly. Nor leaving any in place. Each will have to be unearthed than lifted out of the hole. 

I have dug a hole right beside the first two. Then levered them along with a shovel. Which was harder than starting from scratch. Because the gravel fell in around the blocks. So I had to bodily lift them out to clear the hole. [70lbs!] Something I didn't have to do when they were laid. I made the hole large enough and deep enough to drop the blocks cleanly into place first time. At least I thought I had. Dogh! 😣

I managed to move another block before lunch. The frost had no real depth. I chopped off the "wrong" piece of wood at block depth. Just to avoid any further confusion.  Having a measuring stick for block depth is vital to avoid having to repeatedly lift a block out of too shallow a hole. It is very difficult to judge the precise depth. The southerly, door post spacing is far more realistic now.

I tried a long [2x4] lever but the hole was too deep to allow a block to be lifted clear of the ground. Which meant the block fell back in. With lots of gravel falling in along with it. At least I tried. I might try moving another block this afternoon. Or not. 

With the sun out I set up for imaging or the first time in ages. There is internal dew stealing all the contrast. I have set the dew bands going but hold out little hope of it clearing. 15.00 29/33F. Clouding over from NE! Sun is gone for today. 

At least I remembered where to plug everything in. Though the laptop battery was flat from extended idleness. I put it on charge and it woke up. Only 35Mbps wireless in the observatory today.

The reinforced RA drive system was a great improvement! No more delay before the image moved. It stopped dead when I released the slew button. Given the huge scale of the sun's image on the 27" screen I was very pleased.

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