Re: 1999 Mark III Data Collecting Season

[Tom Droege <droege@wwa.com>]

Three Cheers for Glenn!!!   It is great that you are still running the Mark
III.  Anyone else?  It would still be nice to get all the data we have into
the data base and start exercising it.  Sorry, I have been too busy
building Mark IVs to cheer you all on.  

Meanwhile, I have rebuilt the Mark IV drive with a soft lead screw.  Note
that the error I saw was the equivalent of 2.2 mills of wobble in a 1/4-20
screw.  That is 2.2 mils out of 50 that the threads are out.  I just did
not expect that much wobble.  But come monday I will have 4 different
screws to test.  One of them must have been made on a machine that was
trued up.  These are also machined as opposed to rolled threads.  Who
knows.  I may yet have to have screws machined.  But no doubt expensive.

The weather is clear and I am all set to test the changes but I have to go
out to a dinner with the Rolls Royce owners club.  Not my doing, I would
rather stay here and test the Mark IV.  Perhaps when I get home from the
bash I will give it a go.

The real challenge to a fix like this is to do it with most of the existing
parts while not compromising the design.  Much easier to design from scratch.

Tom Droege

At 03:07 PM 3/21/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Hello,
>        While Tom is busy geting the "kinks" out of the Mark IV RA drive,I
>am about to start another season of taking data iwht the Mark III here in
>Dayton. There is just not enough clear weather from November till the end of
>March to get enough points to make decent light-curves of long-term period
>variables.
>
>        I should have enougth data by the end of the season to publish
>light-curves and periods of many new long term variables (several dozen at
>least)....
>
>        With a stable "data processing" pipeline I will probably collect
>data heavily till the end of the season here in Dayton with the existing
>Mark III camera.I hope that other sites plan to continue to collect Mark III
>data as well.
>
>Clear Skies,
>Glenn G.
>Glenn Gombert <gleng@infinet.com>
>
>
>