Re: New Mount for TOM

[Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com>]

One reason this works is that alignment for tass telescopes is not 
particularly critical.  For a regular telescope being pointed off a half 
degree or so would be a pain.

One way to would be to have the tracks permanently in place.  Use a curtain 
wall - hanging strips of plastic or some such - as the door.  Just motor 
out through the "door", or an upper hard swinging (bar room) door and lower 
strips over the tracks.

Depending on where you are, one does have to worry about how blowing fine 
snow gets into things.  It would be useful to have covers over the rails 
that slid out of the way as the telescope came out of it's dog house.  You 
probably want the rails several feet off the ground - or enough to match 
the expected snow drift if you are on a mountain.  Then little snow plows 
to clean them off.

Partly for this reason, partly to get the Mark IV up where I can work on 
it, my rails will be 3 feet off the deck.

In my case, the particular positioning of things led to the use of heavy 
duty chassis slides.

Tom Droege

At 09:41 AM 7/9/01 -0700, you wrote:

>Tom,
>
>I think you've got something there.  I'll call it the "Coo Coo
>Clock Enclosure".
>
>I've been thinking for ages now about a sliding roof enclosure.
>Now I think that sliding the whole Mk IV might be easier.
>No leaking roof.  It is pretty easy to build a trolly, just bolt
>v-belt pulleys to the edges of a big chuck of wood and use 1x1
>inch angle iron upside down (like the letter "A") for track.
>So all you need is a dog house with spring loaded doors.  The trolly
>would push the doors open on the way out like a coo coo clock.  One
>could power
>the trolly with an off the shelf garage door opener.  It's a powerfull
>liner drive.  Maybe if the track ran uphill the Mark IV would
>"go home" if something broke or the power failed.
>
>One more thing, while a sliding roof enclosure must be built on site
>the coo coo clock mechanisum (track, drive and doors) can be built and
>tested at home and then shipped.  Only a simple dog house need be built
>on site.
>
>Of couse you guys who want to run systems in your back yard can just
>go outside and lift off a cover.
>
>
>
>--- Tom Droege <tdroege@veriomail.com> wrote:
> > I have  been frustrated by TOM being able only to look at a few
> > degrees of
> > sky.  While it is possible with TOM to follow a star for several
> > hours, I
> > have not been able to do it because there are things in the way of
> > TOM's
> > view.  I finally realized that I could put TOM on slides and just
> > slide it
> > out the double door of the tower.  I ordered a pair of heavy duty
> > slides
> > today.  This will solve one other problem.  I will now be able to
> > mount it
> > at a convenient height instead of sitting it on the floor of the
> > tower.   It is really painful for me to work on the floor.
> >
> > With this configuration, TOM should be able to see between the
> > equator and
> > the zenith or a little beyond.  It will also be able see as far as
> > the
> > tracking works.  I can then test to see how far the tracking actually
> > will
> > work instead of measuring the arc and quoting computations.
> >
> > Tom Droege
> >
> >
>
>
>=====
>Chris Albertson
>   chrisalbertson90278@yahoo.com
>   Home: 310-376-1029
>   Cell: 310-990-7550
>
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