I will try to reconstruct a trip report though it is all a blur and the notes that would be useful to reconstruct the events are in a log book at NOFS.
Bill Haynes accompanied me on the trip and was a tremendous help. I could not have made the trip without him, and it would have taken a lot longer to get things working without his help. Bill brought his lap top and his GPS receiver and we were able to navigate through all kinds of obstacles. At one point we succeeded in getting on a new expressway that was not yet open. So we knew where we were even though there were no lines on the map. This was about midnight and we were fortunate to run into Daryl who guided us out of the maze of barrels. Just what Daryl was doing with his two buddies with his pick up truck on a new piece of expressway late in the day will never be determined. ;^)
I brought all kinds of spares with me and used almost everything that I brought. For once I brought enough tools, and the only thing that we had to borrow from the shop was an offset screwdriver to adjust where the brake disk was positioned.
We arrived late Tuesday and were ready to start setting up the Mark IV Wednesday morning. Arne set us up in the 1.0m Ritchey-Chretten telescope dome for the assembly. http://www.nofs.navy.mil/ This building is set between 4 tall "flag poles" which protect it from lightning. The pier for mounting the Mark IV is just on the edge of the protected area. We had one exciting day during the assembly when we were sitting in the dome working and there was a big thunder storm going on. There was some hail and lots of lightning. The sounds inside the dome were something wonderful. We were working at roughly the sonic focus of the dome and the hail and rain on the dome, and the lightning crashing all around was an all sensory experience. Hmmm! There is more incentive to revive the fiber optic link to the Mark IV.
By Friday we had it assembled, and I recall that we moved it out on the pier on Saturday. There were some problems. I recall that I replaced 3 of the four pc boards and shuffled the cameras. It is not clear what any of the problems actually were. The Stamp/Scanner board clock would not stop. I think this was the main problem.
The people at NOFS think I have been too cheap in the side plates of the Mark IV. They are 1/8" material. It is after all the Navy, and they are used to building battleships out of 12" armour plate. So possibly they will remake the side plates. I am yet to see any evidence that they wiggle enough to affect the exposures. But I can be shown. Arne kept pointing to the second pier sitting next to the one with the Mark IV and offering it for ARNE2. This will depend on my getting someone to Lumigen coat a CCD so it is sensitive in the blue. We shall see if this can be done.
From Saturday on, we were trying to take data through various holes in the monsoon clouds. The rain was expected, and more clear sky would have just exhausted us. The rain gave us time to think. After this, the main problem was that the RA drive would just quit running.
Thinking back, this is an old problem for me. I have often seen the first frame in a sequence to have the stars as streaks. I had thought this to be a "shutter open" problem. I now think it is a RA drive stopped problem. I have mostly made runs where I track for one set of frames then rewind the RA and start over. Arne wanted to track the sky taking repeated exposures of the same piece of sky. So we noticed it more quickly. It was also that there were three of us and I was sitting at the terminal while Arne and Bill were at the Mark IV.
I recall that Saturday we took a side trip to the Grand Canyon and Sunday Bill got to take a bike ride up a mountain.
This problem would now appear to be software. Yep, us hardware guys want to blame software even when we have written it. It is not yet clear what the problem is. It mostly runs with my computer, and mostly fails with Arne's computer with is faster. In the end, I left the computer I had brought so that Arne could work to try to isolate the problem to the software.
We were able to get a few good exposures. Really enough to show what the Mark IV could do and what might be possible.
Monday afternoon I gave a talk to a group of astronomers. You can find the abstract on the nofs home page above. I survived. Tuesday morning we had one last pass at fixing the problem, declared it to be software and left.
Tuesday we drove up through monument valley to Grand Junction. Leaving Grand Junction at 9 Am or so Wednesday we just drove home to Chicago, arriving at 6 AM or so Thursday. I have spent the last couple of days recovering.
All in all a successful trip. I have seen enough that I think that the Mark IV can do what it is intended to do. There are a few bugs to be found that may really be software. I will now write up some more description of the hardware so that Arne can poke around and possibly find the problem. Chris, I hope that you can find time to help Arne to bring up your software. I think it is time. I would appreciate being copied on any private correspondence on this subject, though it seems OK to me to just put it up on the list.