TOM2 Maintenance Day

[Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>]

Sigh!  I have been trying to get TOM2 lined up and operating.  After 
putting 3 V cameras on it and none of them working I decided to run last 
night just to see where the telescope was pointing.  So I did a run where 
it went to home, took  an Ic image and then repeated.  After running 
several hours I wrote a disk and took it to a computer where I have DS9 
installed.  The first few images were pretty good, but before I found one 
where I could identify the stars, the images faded to black.  I first 
thought there was something wrong with the cameras, but when I went up in 
the dome to look, I found that the dome was closed.

OK, the dome can be run by a remote controller.  A little radio 
transmitter.  Airplanes flying over or some such can activate the dome 
motors so I have a power strip that I use to get power to the dome.  I 
always switch off the dome power after moving it so it does not move 
unexpectedly.  Apparently the power strip failed in the on position, so 
unknown to me the dome closed while I was not watching it.  Not only that, 
but it wound all the way back around the drive spindle so that now up was 
down and down was up.  Since there are limit switches and the dome was 
fully closed it would no longer allow the up motor (which was now down) to 
work.  Sigh!

So today Dan and I went up in the dome with the intent of replacing the 
motors with a strap and convert the dome to manual control.  Sigh!  It 
looks like it takes 200-300 pound pull to close the dome.  Not something I 
want to try to do even with a counter weight.  So we will keep the motors 
and just make a long cable so that I can operate the dome without crawling 
up into it.  Something for those of you designing observatories to think 
about.  Best to be able to close it by hand.  The other day the power went 
off when I had the dome open.  Fortunately the power was restored before it 
rained.  But it is more probable for power to fail around rain time.  I 
guess I better go out and buy a back up power system.  My problem is that 
every one I have ever bought has been dead when I needed it.

Sigh!  The weather is great and I wanted to make use of it to get TOM2 
calibrated and everything working.

Tom Droege