December 19

We were right about last week's rain forecast - our desert site only had about an inch of rain compared to the 7 to 8 inches the forecasters predicted for the past week. When I got to the site this AM the other crew pouring cement for the other four, not three observatories - my mistake, were already at work. During the course of the day they brought in five trucks with a total of thirty-six cubic yards of cement.

Pouring the slabs down the hill from us.

By the time John showed up I had already laid out the four hundred feet of hose and set up the cement mixer. We spent a bit more time taking the tarps off the footings and once again vacuuming out the two footings holes - probably twenty pounds of loose material that blew in over the last two weeks.

Once we started we realized several things. The cement mixer was Chinese and it did work - barely. Once we dumped the water and three bags of Quikrete in and started mixing, we found that the baffles in the mixer were not well designed and did not mix the material in the bottom of the mixer. We had to stop every few minutes and hand mix the bottom stuff to get it uniform. I should have known with my previous experience with Chinese equipment that they are barely functional if they work at all - you get exactly what you pay for.

We also realized that because of the height of the top of the mixer that only I could load the 60 pound bags of Quikrete into the mixer - I had to lift the bag almost to shoulder height and then flip it over and onto the top of the mixer. We got through the first twelve bags, or 720 pounds of cement, pretty quick with me mixing, John and I sharing the transport to the footing holes by wheel barrel. Then John shoveled the cement into the footings and his wife worked the cement to fill in vacant pockets, all while I mixed another load.

Then we found out that the gods approved of our light hearted acceptance of their trick upon us the other week. The club contractor, who was directing the pours for the other observatories, came over and said that they were finished and did we want the remaining cement for nothing - about a cubic yard by his estimation. We of course said yes and the last cement truck pulled as far up our driveway as possible. The cement was dumped into our wheel barrel and we wheeled it over to our work area. We got a total of eight wheel barrels out of the truck and that turned out to be a bit more than we needed.
John taking a barrel of cement from the truck.

This was great! What we figured to be an all day job finished by noon. Of course now we have 48 remaining bags (1.4 TONS) of Quikrete that we have no current plans for but we do have some future plans. We are thinking of building a totally enclosed BBQ pit off the south side of the observatory. Also, we are thinking of building a pad for visual observing off of our south-east corner; it would include a small shed that would roll on rails set into the pad and would house my sixteen inch Dob reflector that has been mothballed for the last five years.

John and his wife working on the initial smoothing after the pour was complete on the west footing.

Close-up of the east footing completed and starting to cure. You can see the cement deep in the main hole. We may decide to add more cement there instead of entirely using back fill. The scratches in the surface are to provide a rough surface for the grout that will top off the footing.

John rough smoothing the surface of the west footing.

Today was the first time that we finished a days' work ahead of schedule so after we had lunch and basked in the 70 degree sunny weather for awhile, we walked around the site to see the other pads that were poured today. Tonight is the club's monthly star party so there were quite a few people starting to show up by mid-afternoon. One of the old timers said that today saw more construction at our site than has ever occurred previously in a single day.

Here I am having my turn to mug for the camera after the pour was completed.

While walking around the entire site, we came upon a view of our observatory site from an angle I haven't shown in this blog before. The picture below is from the southeast:

You may be able to tell that our whole site is on a small leveled area on a hillside about ten feet above the lower surrounding area. On the left in front of the observatory are the steel bars that we refurbished last summer. The sunlit side of the observatory is the south wall. You can see that there is no longer any structure remaining on top of the walls that was to support the originally planned dome. John's pop-up camper is to the right on the driveway. Behind the camper is the PVC frame for a large tent to cover our vehicles if we want - we haven't used it yet. The ridgeline is about fifty yards beyond the observatory to the north.

Here are two of the new slabs poured today. They are the ones from the first picture that showed the cement truck at work.

Notice the two open rectangles in each slab. Each one is the site of where a cement pier for a telescope will be placed. These observatories will be of simple stick construction and are much smaller than our observatory so they will probably be completed by February while we will continue to work until summer.

Our next plans are for John and I to work independently for a month or so. He will start on the heavy fabrication work for the rail system and the roof trusses at home. I will be working on removing the warm room window, rewiring the building, and replacing the hanging roof panels and lighting system.

December 5

John and I got out this day with the hope of pouring at least one footing. However, when we looked at the rebar and form construction, both had shifted slightly within the footing holes. The culprit was that several connection points of rebar were held together with the stiff wire that is often used. Apparently, us amateurs did not secure them tightly enough and our footings were slightly off. So we pulled the rebar out of the footing hole and John proceeded to weld every joint that had previously only been wired together. John welding the final joints. There is another grid layer of rebar still in each hole that is not attached to the pier support John is working with.

Remember that we are trying to get the top of the footings and the base of the rail support accurately positioned to within 1/16 of an inch and perfectly leveled with the back of the building five feet away. We actually spent the rest of the day completing that task. We probably would make a good comedy team for a construction gang. We eventually did get everything placed properly and solidly. Here's a couple of pics of the completed footing construction:
This is the west pier. The hammer in the foreground can give a sense of scale. The two steel horizontal beams are temporary and are used to position the frame level in the east-west direction. The two large clamps are also temporary to position the frame level in the north-south direction. The top of the large frame and the wood square are set level with a spot on the north face of the observatory using a laser level. When the cement has set, the wood square on top will be removed. The four bolts it is holding in place will attach to the bottom of the pier supports. The large wood frame will also be unscrewed and removed. The remaiing part of the pit will be backfilled to ground level.


In the above photo you can see down into the excavation pit of the east footing. The pit is 18 inches deep and approximately 3 1/2 feet on a side. There is a rebar grid about 4 inches off the bottom. The entire bottom of the pit will be filled to eight inches of cement covering the bottom rebar grid as well as the second rebar grid that is welded to the vertical rebar. This bottom part of the cement footing will end at the bottom of the large square wood mold. More cement will be poured into the center of the wood mold to the top of the mold and the bottom of the square plate. If you look close at the bottom of the upper right part of the pit you may be able to see a new friend of ours - a 2 inch long stink bug that didn't seem to mind the 40 degree temps all day.

While we were out there another construction team showed up to begin work on preparing the molds for the cement slabs for three more observatories. Here's a shot of them at work excavating and taken from the front of our observatory: They are working under the supervision of a club member who is a contractor. They plan to pour all three slabs on 12/19. Here is the supreme irony that the gods are treating us to. John and I have slaved pretty hard to haul in sixty bags of 60 pound Quikrete - read: 1.8 TONS - to our site and assembled our own portable cement mixer. Why? Because no cement business would come out to our site to pour such a small amount of work - we're five miles up a dirt road from the nearest paved road. We were originally invited and briefly considered joining up with the cement pour for the three new observatories but opted out because they did not plan to pour until spring and that didn't fit our schedule. As of now, we have gone slower and they have gone faster and guess what? On 12/19 when they have the cement truck in to pour the three slabs, we will be mixing our own small pour for our two footings. We could have the truck add a bit more to their mix and pour for us but that meant that we would have to haul out the 60 bags we already have on site.

The gods must be smiling!

On top of that ironic frustration, the weather was mostly overcast, windy, and temps stayed in the lower 40s. The picture below is of an unsual cloud formation called "lenticular". It occurs when strong, straight line winds blow consistently over an elevated area, such as a mountain. In this case this cloud is above the 7,000 foot San Jacinto Mountains on the west side of Palm Springs, about 25 miles to our east.

Below is another shot taken later in the day of a lenticular pancake - several lenticular clouds piled one on top of the other and pretty rare. I have seen that only once before and that was when we lived in New York and that occurred over the Catskills. On the bottom right you can see a water hose snaking off into the distance. That is a 400 foot long set of hoses that I have laid down the last three times we have been working in anticipation of mixing cement.

As we left we were concerned about the weather forecast thru 12/14. According to the So Cal super duper weather men who call a light drizzle a "torrential mist" and interrupt TV programs to warn of an incoming dew front, the desert could get as much as 7 inches of rain from 12/6 thru 12/14. Our estimation that they have their decimal point wrong in the forecast is holding as of today, 12/12 - there has been barely one inch of rain at our desert site.

We will be out there on 12/19, hopefully pouring at least one of the footings. That will end our work for the year.

Here's a fun picture I took from home on Tuesday morning after the first storm cleared out; that's the one that dropped so much snow over so much of the country this past week. This is looking east up my street at the rising sun. Prominent are the crespuscular rays from sunlight piercing through holes in the clouds.

November 24

Its been a frustrating several weeks in progressing with the observatory, mostly due to family events with both our families, plus frustration with the weather - yup, there is weather in California. So there are no photos in this post, just an update - or a downdate, take your pick

Based on the current wiring diagram of the observatory, I've been working on a a rewiring plan as far a possible but haven't really progressed into it yet.

After the last post, John and I decided that the 14 inch depth to our footings were too shallow, despite it being in almost completely solid rock. This past Saturday I spent almost 8 hours with a jack hammer and shovel completing the excavation of both holes down to 18 inches and also widening them to 3 X 3 1/2 feet. After all, we will be sliding a 4,000 pound on wheels over the north end of the building by almost six feet - better safe than sorry. John came out midday and assembled a new 3 1/2 bag cement mixer that a friend of his loaned us for the duration. I left in the evening but John stayed thru Tuesday. I returned on Monday and left with John noon Tuesday.

Weather-wise, Monday was the worst day we have spent there during construction, even worse than the 110+ heat we suffered through in the summer. This time it was the wind - a cold Santa Ana. It blew from Sunday until we left early today, maintaining a constant 20 mph and gusting to 30 mph. What is most difficult to deal with is the fine desert dust that gets entrained in the wind. We spent 8 hours Monday assembling the rebar that John previously cut. We had planned to install and properly align the rebar and post assembly for both footings plus mix and pour the cement (~60 bags of 60 pounds each). We must have had a few too many when we set that goal. Durign all this work the wind was so loud that we could barely hear each other shouting more than twenty feet apart.

By dark on Monday we had welded together one rebar frame and accurately placed it. We needed it to be level with a point on the observatory wall 5 feet away and square with its corner with an accuracy of 1/16 inch. The second rebar frame we assembled but only approximately placed. All day we kept vacuuming the blown dust out of each footing hole. We had dust in our eyes running in muddy rivulets down our cheeks, up our noses, and even inside our clothes pockets. We stopped at sunset with the wind picking up even more. I slept in the club bunkhouse where I took a hot shower and had to turn the heat up to 85 to keep from shivering. John tried to sleep in his pop-up camper but the canvas walls blew out during the night and he ended up in the bunkhouse too.

This morning the wind and dust were blowing and pounding so hard on the bunkhouse that it woke us up and it sounded like a hailstorm. After a few hours it let up and we checked the observatory site. The footings were almost half filled in with dust. We decided to lick our wounds and called it a day. We'll be back next week. The plan now is to complete the welding and accurate positioning of the second rebar frame and then come back another day and mix and pour the cement. Fortunately we both had parked our cars on the lee side of the osbervatory or the bunkhouse so we didn't have the paint stripped off our cars. I have seen that happen to people several times.

The other item we wanted to complete before Thanksgiving was the outside painting. However, we may be stuck until spring. The infrared reflecting additive we will add to the paint needs to set for at least 24 hours at temperatures above 55 degrees. Other users have told us that they have had problems with the paint flaking off over the coruse of a year when the temperature fell below 55 during the setting period. Our night temps in the desert in the winter are always flirting with 55 at best and frequently its cold enough to get snow accumulations.

Our original goal was to have the observatory roof built and completed by Thanksgiving. That's now revised to Memorial Day.

October 16 - 17

I just completed my first overnight at Anza in quite a while. My plan was to stay from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning. I had two objectives: finish the excavation with John of the second footing for the pier that will support the rails that extend beyond the north end of the observatory and, at night, shake down my new imaging equipment configuration.

I got there about 1 PM with another beautiful day there - temps in the low 90s, very low humidity (less than 10%), light breeze, and a very dark blue sky without a single cloud. John showed up about an hour later and we got the excavation down to about half a foot in two hours. The slow progress was due once again to using a jack hammer to break up the solid rock a few inches below the surface soil. By 4 PM we stopped to wash up and get our equipment set up for a night of imaging or, in my case, equipment shake down.

This was the first time I set up in the new observatory; John set up on his observing pad about 30 yards away. An observing pad is simply a 12 foot by 12 foot concrete slab supplied with electricity, and sometimes a permanent mount aligned with the North Pole. John will be selling the lease to his pad when the observatory is completed, as will I.

I set up all my equipment before it got dark. The night became very dark with the Milky Way being visible from Sagittarius in the south all the way through Cassiopeia in the northeast. One way of quantitatively measuring how dark the sky is is by using a portable photometer called a Sky Quality Meter. It measures how bright the dark part of the sky is directly overhead. The higher the number, the darker the sky plus the scale is logarithmic rather than linear. If you live in a city and can see only a few stars, your reading would be no higher than about 17. If you can just barely make out the Milky Way when its overhead, your number is probably about 19. That's what it is at my house. The darkest measured anywhere on earth is about 23. That's 4 numbers different than at my house but is actually about 40 times darker. A difference of as little as 0.3 can be very easily apparent to the naked eye. Friday night at Anza, that number was 21. Visually, I already mentioned how bright the Milky Way was. There were easily several thousand stars visible and some of the brighter and larger objects were naked eye visible.

With my equipment I had to get several different systems working. With the equatorial mount, a Losmandy G-11, I needed to learn the procedure to align it with the North Pole. This is necessary so that I can take long exposure photos of the sky and not have the stars streak on the image as the earth turns. I needed to get it accurate to within less than 10 minutes of arc - that's less than 1/3 the diameter of the full moon. Surprisingly that was done pretty quickly. The next part was to get the auto guider system to work. That is made up of a small refractor telescope piggybacked on my main telescope, with a small camera that is linked to a program on my laptop computer as well as the G-11 mount. What this system actually does is to take a picture of a specific star every 2 seconds, the software then determines how much it has moved over the two seconds, and then signals the telescope mount to correct its movement to accommodate the change. This is necessary because all telescope mounts have some inherent variability that needs to be reduced as far as possible to have pinpoint stars when you image. In this case I got the software to talk to the camera but it could not recognize the mount. That's something to work on for next time. My main system I use for imaging is a refractor with a 4 inch diameter lens and an old Canon Rebel DSLR camera that has been modified. Another software program will tell the DSLR to take a picture, how long to expose it for, whether to store the image on the camera chip or download to the laptop, and how long to wait between taking pictures, and how many pictures to take. Typically, for one object I will take 60 pictures of 3 minutes each, separated by 12 seconds (the time necessary to transfer the image to the camera chip. In this case the software would not operate the camera as had been advertised so I need to find the correct drivers on the Internet. As a result, I was pretty much done by about 10:30 PM that night with no hope of imaging on Saturday night.

Fortunately a couple of other members came by about that time with a bottle of wine and several cups. I could tell that they must have left an empty bottle somewhere on their journey over to me. They hung around until the bottle was empty and moved on. I actually went to sleep in the warm room shortly thereafter. John has his telescope imaging set up perfected. He sets up by sunset, programs it for the entire night, and then either goes around socializing, visually observing, or going to sleep.

I have found that one rarely sleeps much past sunrise in the desert. John came over and we drove ten miles into Anza for breakfast. Good food, not expensive, and lots of the locals from 80 year old cowboys to the native Cahuilla Indians.

We got back and started on that second hole again, finally finishing it by 1 PM. At that point we decided to map our electrical circuits in the observatory. We have 4 fifteen amp circuit breakers and figured out what circuit currently powers what outlet or light. By about 2 PM I decided to call it a day and head home since I was unable to image Saturday night.

Regarding the observatory, we have several options for the next steps:
1 - John will fabricate a rebar assembly for the two pier footings. Then we will get a 2 bag cement mixer and the necessary cement mix.
2 - I'll get 10 gallons of outdoor paint and mix it with the special additive I found. Its a NASA-developed infrared blocker to be mixed with paint. It blocks 99% of the infrared radiation longer than 1 nanometer. That will deflect most of the heat energy from sunlight and keep the observatory walls cooler during the day so it will not adversely affect our imaging at night. We decided it will be easier to use a roller with this material rather than the power sprayer we were considering.
3 - We will re-design the electrical system as far as possible to meet our needs which are a bit different than the original owners. Once we complete the design, I'll do the re-wiring.
If we go with the pier footings first, we will probably follow that up with the roof fabrication and hold off on 2 and 3 above.

Since I'll be having knee surgery this Wednesday, it will probably be a couple of weeks before I am out there working again.

October 2

After several memorable family events over the last month I made it back to the observatory this past weekend. Although I have been AWOL my friend John was busily working several weekends. He worked on continuing the demolition of the old dome supports, cleared brush for a further twenty feet north of the building, and completed fabricating and installing most of the stairs leading up to the observing area and completed the outside grouting project.
Stairs are completed except for the bottom floor platform.

The day was gorgeous - I think I know why people live there despite the amazing heat of June thru August - the rest of the year is terrific. Saturday was terrific - bright blue sky, 75 degrees, low humidity, and a light cool breeze.

Saturday also marked a milestone - the final demolition was 99% completed with the removal of the last roof eave from the warm room roof. The remaining 1% are the two top plates on the east and west walls which will stay in place until we are actually ready to install the steel rail structure.

Dropped eave on the left next to our debris pile.

Most of the eight hours we worked involved excavation. We have two post holes to dig to support the two posts that will support the rail system that will extend to the north of the building for five feet. As can be seen from the photo below where John has just started to dig below grade after excavating the loose soil, there is a steep five foot slope immediately behind the north wall that we had to excavate through just to get to the observatory floor level. Based on the loose soil that made up the slope we removed, the plan was to dig footings three feet across and up to two feet deep.

John using the jack hammer as he digs below grade

However, once we dug down to grade, the loose soil ended and we reached what is commonly called "desert pavement" - fine grains of rock that have gradually glued together with "desert varnish" over a long period of time. Not even a pick helped to break up this stuff. Fortunately, we had a small jack hammer that we used extensively. John used the jack hammer to break up a few inches of the rock, then I cleared out the loosened rock. Back and forth for hours. By the end of the day we ended up excavating about 15 inches with one hole. Since we were going into solid rock, we decided 15 inches was deep enough for the footing.

Tom using a small jack hammer in hole

We called it a day at that point. Below you can see the near hole only;y had the slope cleared down to grade while the further hole is full excavated. Notice below that we threw much of the cleared rock on top of the slope to serve as a berm to direct any water flow away from the observatory.

The holes don't look like anything much but that was almost 8 hours work by two people with a power tool. Our next step is to complete the second hole next weekend. After that we will either proceed with pouring the footings and erecting the support posts or spray painting the observatory exterior.

August 29

After hearing about heat warnings thru Sunday and the temp hitting 116 at Anza yesterday (Friday), I was ready for another day like several weeks ago. Fortunately, that didn't happen while I was there. I arrived early to get as much done before it got really hot although it already felt like it was in the low 90s. The warm room seems to be pretty well insulated because the temp inside couldn't have been above 75 when I arrived. I got set up with my 4 gallons of paint to complete the day's objective: finish the first coat on the half of the room that I didn't complete last week and apply a second coat to the entire room. I looked around for our little pet lizard - just a local resident about 7 inches long that wouldn't leave when we started to clean the place up. Usually it is on the walls but I didn't see it anywhere. I started up the heavy duty fan we have and then I found where he was. We'll have to find another local lizard.

I was painting by 8:30 AM. Completing the first coat went pretty smoothly and took less than an hour. I drank my pint of water every 20 minutes. Pretty soon the room was as hot as outside since the fan was running to help dry the paint quicker. The second coat went on much easier and quicker than the first. I was done by Noon! I left at that time with the temp climbing past 102 and hitting 112 later in the afternoon. Fortunately, it looks like no additional coats will be necessary although I do have to paint the inch or so of wall down by the floor. The next indoor painting will be when we build the divider to make two separate rooms but that may not occur until after the roof is on.

Second coat looks good. The ceiling panels that need replacing can also be seen.

Looking toward the front door and the electrical panel.

John worked at home today. Last week he took home some small pieces of steel to fabricate the short set of stairs we need going to the observing room.

Instead of four very steep temporary stairs, we will build a permanent steel stair way. The first step will actually be a landing at the observatory door. That will allow us to build three steps instead of four in the same space. The treads will be a nice 11 inches wide instead of the 5 inches shown here.

Here are some additional things we have done or need to complete in the next several weeks. Here are the completed steel we recovered from the debris pile.

More steel will need to be purchased but this was a great start and an unexpected cost saving.

This is one of four heavy braces that helped support the old rail structure. Four of these braces will be removed in the coming weeks.

The south wall is clean from the power washing .The dark marks are the experimental grout filling that John used. It looks successful and John will fill in the remaining eroded areas that can be seen over the next week or so. Hopefully I will power paint the exterior in the next two weeks.

The blue ridge in the distance is Palomar Mountain, about 12 miles away. Just beyond and below the ridge line is Palomar Observatory.

August 23

Now that the warm room walls were cleaned, I came out on this Sunday to begin painting them. John had been out since Thursday evening doing his imaging as well as working around the observatory. He got quite a bit done. Even after removing the circular steel rail two weeks ago there still was a lot of rail support stuff on top of the wall that needed to be pulled down. John took care of that before I arrived, leaving only a 2X6 cap board on top of the east and west walls that will remain there until we’re ready to set comparable steel beams in their place. After three days he was pretty beat and headed home just as I started to paint.

We’re using a very light blue semi-gloss. I did all the normal taping and edge trimming and realized quickly that two gallons weren’t going to do the job by a long shot. I only completed about half the walls and that’s going to need a second coat. I’ve painted cinder block before but I have never seen paint soak in like this. I would put a nice heavy coat on the cinder block that covered everything. Over the next 20 seconds or so I could hear these crackling sounds as the paint got sucked into the pores and holes of the block. I was out of paint in two hours and could have finished easily if I had enough paint. I think I’ll need 2 gallons to complete the first coat and another 2 gallons for the entire second coat – I hope.

Two views of the partially painted warm room

The steel dome rail system can be seen on top of the cinder block wall when we took possession in June

Only a 2X6 cap piece of wood is left of the original rail system.

Thank you for being patient as I’ve published several entries a day. I started this blog about three weeks ago and had to do a lot to catch up and you may have suffered with some unusual verb tenses and switching them back and forth – I know I did. I had to go back on notes and emails and remembrances with John about exactly what we did and when we did it. From the next point on I will be current with the observatory progress and probably will talk a bit more about my plans.

August 8

Today we wanted to complete cleaning the warm room. Although empty since mid-June, the room was kind of grungy. The walls had weep marks on them and blown dust and the floor was pretty caked with dust that became thin mud at one time and dried. We needed a place to cool off and relax during our work breaks and we were getting tired of sitting under only the canopy with a big block building next to us.

We had to make sure we had the equipment we needed. Getting a power washer wasn’t a big deal; getting 400 feet of water hose was. Last weekend I paced off the distance from the nearest water tap at the club’s main observatory and determined it was about 380 feet. This week I managed to borrow both a power washer and 400 feet of water hose. The hose was on a large portable spool that was pretty heavy so I drove it to the club observatory. John and I hooked it up and unwound it back to our observatory, following the same foot paths that I had paced off the week before. We ran out of hose at the head of our driveway, about 50 feet short. This is the time you start scratching your head. As it turned out, the people who loaned me the hose shorted me fifty feet.

We searched several of the storage sheds on site that we have common access to and found all sorts of gardening equipment except a hose. Then we tried to run the hose straight thru all the brush. That was a big sweaty effort that we were very careful, watching out for rattlesnakes, but we still were about 25 feet short. Time for a road trip! We had to drive into the bustling metropolis of Anza and find a hardware store. Anza is kind of a throwback place that is slowly changing. The last time I was there the main street had one lane each way even though it is a state highway, plus there were hitching posts! That’s right – like in horses! Stand in the middle of town and you can see at least a mile in each direction and see 20 structures and maybe a car or two on the road. Now its been upgraded to a two lane highway thru town, still only a car or two, but no hitching posts.

We picked up two 50 foot lengths of hose and got back to the observatory by about noon. We cranked up the power washer and I started. We did the walls pretty quick and went on to the floor. The grime came loose very quickly but I got my socks and sneakers pretty soaked thru. John got the wet vac out and started sopping up the water and also turned on a powerful fan to blow out the room. Only took about an hour including vacuuming up all the freestanding water.

Warm room after power washing floor and walls

We took a break for lunch while waiting for John’s good friend Tony to visit from Rancho Cucamonga to see what our place looks like. Having three high amp usage pieces of equipment on at one time without blowing a circuit gave us some added co

nfidence about our electric supply. Tony ended up stuck in traffic so, since the warm room was power washed so fast, we decided to tackle the outside walls. That was no problem at all and it took maybe an hour and a half so we were ahead of schedule because we thought the outside walls would take another weekend. The soil here is so dry that despite all the water that we used for an hour and a half, there was not only no pooling by the foot of the walls, but the soil was just dark from the dampness.

Outside walls after power washing. Lower block surface erosion extends to floor level of observing room and will be repaired

Tony finally showed up and after a short tour ended by 2:30 and the weather was not too hot, we decided to tackle the 18 foot diameter steel rail and its supports on top of the observing area walls. Tony and I were the brute force and John was the cutter. John cut the rail into four equal pieces as well as several layers of plywood that were part of its support. Since the pieces were shaped like triangles but with the hypotenuse curved inward and they weighed several hundred pounds each, we had to be very careful about slowly pushing each piece to the edge of the wall, then quickly shoving it over, and getting it out of the way as it fell off and it swung up in the air. We were done by about 4:30 and were quite surprised at all that we did. We were pretty tired and silly by that time so we took some pics of the day’s work in a comical light.
John and I pointing that we moved the rails from the top of the wall to the pile on the ground




Tony giving me Last rites as I'm pinned beneath a piece of rail structure



Tony giving John CPR while he's pinned also



Now we also have an even larger debris pile that we have to move soon:
Summing up, we had a slow start to the day with the shortage on the hose, but we not only achieved the day’s plan of power washing the warm room, but we also washed the whole outside and took down the steel rail ring. Not bad for a day’s work.

Just as a follow-up, by the next day my feet were covered in over a hundred bites. The diagnosis on Tuesday were sand flea bites. John didn't get a single one. I guess I stirred them up and then drowned them with the power washing.

July 25

The weather finally eased up at Anza this weekend. This time it was almost 20 degrees cooler than last week, being only in the mid-80s but the humidity was still in single digits. There was a chance of thunderstorms and I kept my eye on a line of cumulus building throughout the day 20 miles east of me in the Coachella Valley where Palm Springs is. There was a nice cool outflow blowing from them all day. I started sanding and painting the nine, 18 foot long, 1X1s by about 9 AM and surprisingly completely finished them by 12:30 PM.

I had two curious visitors stop by to see how we're doing, both of them club members out for the weekend. Jim Hannum (whom I met for the first time today) owns the home at the top of the hill with two other club members. Their joint observatory is larger than their house. It houses four large telescopes and they are building another telescope that has a mirror diameter of 36 inches. He offered us some help in that they have a 14 foot open trailer that we can now use anytime to truck stuff to the Anza dump. We are starting to generate a considerable construction debris pile that we will have to truck out in the next few weeks.

Rick Wiggins stopped by a bit later. He has a completely remote controlled observatory on site. I found out he has quite a background in remote control. His current Anza observatory is the third one of his own that he has built. He has also helped Russ Croman and others build some of the remote control telescope businesses in New Mexico, including around Cloudcroft. Just in general conversation today, he has already saved us from making some errors. We were going to control the scopes with Bluetooth from our control desks so we wouldn't need to lay any wire - he said forget Bluetooth - there's too much interference and its too unstable for our purposes. He can show us how to run just one line from each scope to the control desk - that will be for all telescope functions as well as the webcams to observe the equipment. He suggested re-considering the warm room set-ups. Rick said that he is always using white light in his warm room - never red light! If that's the case, John doesn't need a separate warm room in the observing area but can use the main warm room. Rick suggested using what would have been Phil's room as a common bunk room.

John and I will have to consider these things. Fortunately, we have some time for that because the roof comes first. Rick said he would be happy to provide whatever expertise and time we need from him to get our place up and running remotely - wow! He's so generous because he says that he very much likes to help amateurs who are serious about the hobby.

I haven't said much to this point about exactly what I'm going to do with this observatory when its done. I have been interested in astronomy since I was a kid. Other than a short period in the '70s when I did visual observing with a 6 inch reflector, I was basically an arm chair astronomer until '95 when I joined the New Jersey Astronomical Association, of which I am still a long distance member. After moving to Southern California I became interested in astro photography, mainly because I started to wear bifocals and it became very hard for me to look through an eyepiece with my glasses on so I thought that imaging would be a good substitute. By 2004 I was imaging with a DSLR and a small 4 inch refract or on a mount that followed the sky. I frequently came out to this Anza club site for overnight trips on the weekend to do imaging. Its a great spot being far from city lights, at over 4600feet altitude, and very still skies. However, the downside is that the days can be extremely hot in summer, there can be snow in winter, and lots of varmints: scorpions, rattlers, coyotes, and rare mountain lions. Its pretty scary when you are out there alone at night looking at your computer screen and you can hear things moving out beyond your field of vision.

I have also become interested in what is called photometry. That's the measurement of slight changes in the amount of light that an object gives off. Some stars change brightness, asteroid rotation rates can be measured, other stars can explode, yet other stars are multiple and information can be learned by measuring their changing brightness. There is a lot of possibilities for real scientific research with amateur equipment. I'll write more about this anotehr time.

July 18

This is the day we will remember. All week the weather service was declaring an excessive heat warning for the desert areas. We decided to try to work for three reasons: 1 – we thought we had learned to pace ourselves and hydrate well (last weekend was a lesson learned) – remember Nietzsche: “That which does not kill, strengthens” or was that Conan the Barbarian? No, Conan said, “Do you want to live forever?” , 2 – we want the roof up by Thanksgiving which means we need to start roof construction by Labor Day, and 3 - this was the club’s annual Starbecue, a barbecue just before sunset so we get heavy and listless and our greasy fingers muck up our telescope lenses and mirrors.

I got started on sanding the 2X4 steel beams and John worked on ripping an internal wall out in the warm room that we didn’t want as well as unearthing about 500 pounds of concrete that was dumped just outside our front door during the original construction.

2X4s prior to sanding and painting

As we’re working we’re both realizing that this is by far the hottest day we’ve experienced. There were more than 20 people on site by early afternoon and all but John and I, plus one other were in AC somewhere. That one other guy was about 30 yards from me and was partially insane. He was wearing heavy, dark blue, full length jeans, a black shirt, and just a small hat; plus he was on his hands and knees cutting 5 foot high brush with a pair of hand clippers! A bit later another guy Sammy is calling and waving to me from about where that guy was. I went over and there’s the clipper guy, jabbering away incoherently and half-conscious in the brush. I helped Sammy load him into a car and he drove the guy down to the bunkhouse. Other people there got him in front of an AC unit and got him into some ice for several hours. If Sammy hadn’t walked from the bunk house to his car and passed by this guy, he probably would have died because no one could see him on the ground. I was actually the closest one. By the time I got back to the observatory, John was taking a break inside so I joined him. When I entered I felt like I just walked into an AC room. I said so and he started laughing and showed me the thermometer – it was 99 inside!

Diligently sanding somewhere beyond 110 degrees

With that example, let me talk about the weather. First of all, the US Weather Bureau station in Anza about 5 miles east of us reported a high of 111 for the day; a local private weather station about 5 miles south of us reported a high of 118. I can tell you that with those temperatures, there is no way that you can accidentally work too fast or drink too little. A couple other unusual weather events. Several dust devils blew through our site early in the day. One I didn’t see while I was sanding until I got a mouthful of dust and sage brush. It started to lift our canopy despite having six cinder blocks holding it down until John and I jumped onto the posts. We also had a light shower around noon time from some clouds I thought were 15 miles away - rain at 110 degrees! We quit about 4 PM after about 7 hours – about the longest day we put in thus far.

By the way, clipper guy apparently felt better by that time but was still insane because right after we quit, he came back out and started his whole thing all over again – including passing out.

We hung around for the barbecue that started around 6 in the shadow of the main observatory. Nice food spread and about 50 people enjoying the seemingly pleasant 100 degree temp. However, I can’t understand how people can eat hot food in such heat.

Despite the extreme heat, neither John nor I had any problems at all working with those temps. Slow movement, lots of cold water regularly, and protect yourself from the intense sun.

July 11

Short blog today not to bore everyone with lots of words about little work. Same weather as last week. The 2X6s and 2X8s were completely finished and they look very good - I never thought they would look so good after what they originally looked like. John finished all of the brush cutting and root digging we need.

Here are the 2X8s and 2X6s I just finished. This picture was taken prior to sanding. By the way, the building on top of the nearby hill is the club's observatory housing a 22 inch Cassegrain telescope instrumental in discovering a number of supernovae, or exploding stars.

Below is a blow up of the club observatory. Its roof design is identical to what we are building but it is about 3 feet shorter.

July 3

With Phillis and Danielle on the East Coast for the July 4th holiday, I headed out to Anza on Friday the 3rd. Just more backbreaking sanding of the 2X8s and 2X6s. It takes about 4 hours to do 2 sides of the steel so this weekend I completed the sanding on those sizes and started the painting. It gets pretty tough on your wrists after holding the rotary drill for that long. I used an oil-based Rustoleum specially made for highly rusted steel. When you sand off the rust on our steel, the newly bared surface shows no roughness or scaling so it looks pretty good but since we are using this steel for the supports and rails for the roof we decided it would be better to paint it.

The day was like last weekend – very hot and dry – near 100 and single digit humidity. The danger with these conditions is that you dehydrate very quickly and don’t realize it – your shirt never gets damp no matter how much you sweat. Once you get behind on your fluids its very hard to catch up. That’s what I ran into. We had instituted a schedule to prevent that: one pint of ice water or caffeine-free soda every 15 to 20 minutes, work at a slow pace, and keep your head shaded – I’m under a canopy, John wears a big brim hat with a neck cover. This day I worked a bit faster than normal plus I cut my water breaks to every 45 minutes or so without realizing it. By mid-afternoon I knew I was dehydrating so I drank extra and sat down for a half hour. I knew I was done for the day when I tried to work again and promptly banged my shin into the end of one of the steel beams hard enough that I had blood running into my socks. That was it for the day. I stopped the bleeding, washed it off, got in the van and started the AC while I drank another bottle of water. I started back home and grabbed my last bottle of water after only a couple of miles, still on the washboard road. When I finished that I realized I needed more but all I had was about 3 inches of ice and cold water in the cooler. Fortunately I had a coffee cup from the morning drive and started to scoop out the ice and water while I drove. By the time I got home 90 minutes later I felt a lot better but the cooler was empty! During the course of that day – only about 12 hours – I drank nearly 3 gallons (26 pounds) of fluid to stay hydrated – plus I had no need of the facilities until the next morning.

When its that hot out – pay attention! I think it’s a sign of how extreme it is out there in that there are five other observatories under construction and everyone is waiting till fall to do any more work.

June 27

John and I were both working at the observatory on the 27th. We erected a 10’ by 10’ canopy over the steel beams that were ready to sand to give me some shade. That was my job. I brought a steel brush thinking I could brush off the rust in a few hours. I was off by only a few orders of magnitude in terms of the amount of work involved. John brought a rotary drill and a circular steel brush for the sanding. John started to cut and dig up all the brush around the observatory. This was the first really hot day with temps near 105, single digit humidity, and a light dry breeze. We broke every 45 minutes or so for drinks and a short rest.

About noon time the previous owner showed with his wife, a helper, and a U-Haul. They spent about 45 minutes emptying the warm room and loading the truck. He then had to take it to the local dump, more than ten miles away, and unload it. What a waste of time and money on his part. Like I said in a previous post, we had offered to get rid of all of that stuff if he reduced his price by $500. Instead he rented a U-Haul where he lives in Lake Arrowhead and drove it 160 miles to and from the observatory at about $250 plus gas – maybe another $30. Then his helper was $100 for the day. So he and his wife saved about $10 an hour each on a beautiful Saturday getting sweaty and dirty and driving around in a rented truck. What people will do when they think they’re saving money!

After they left we went back to sanding and digging up brush. We were pretty well spent by 3 PM, mostly from the heat, and we called it a day. I didn’t even get halfway done with the 2X6s and John only got most of the brush cut back. He was a bit wary by one manzanita where he found a foot and a half wide burrow under some branches he cleared. He felt better when he accidentally stepped into it down to his knee and nothing happened. We guessed the burrow was abandoned.

June 20

John and I had our first full day at the observatory and got a chance to look the place over in very fine detail. We were glad to get the approval at the Board meeting on June 15; otherwise we would have had to wait until near the end of July. That gave us an extra six weeks to achieve our primary goal – have the observatory area roofed over by Thanksgiving.

The place shows the vagaries of 20 years of near abandonment and the halting of work in mid-project back then. On the north side of the building, 5 foot high manzanita and chaparral bushes have grown right up to the back wall. They’ll have to be dug out from the roots for about twenty feet. The outside walls were never painted so they have suffered some surface erosion in places that will have to be grouted before we paint it, especially on the south wall. Just a few feet west of the building is a left over construction debris pile, much of it half buried. There are as many as 30 cinder blocks piled up in good condition which we will find a use for. Other stuff like rotted plywood and roofing shingles were partly buried as well as lengths of steel rebar. We decided to dig up and move everything about 20 feet away because the junk would be in our way when we started to work on the roll off roof. We moved the cinder blocks and started on the partly buried stuff. Most of the debris was underground. There were several lengths of rebar up to 15 feet long that snaked their way just below the surface. When we finished we raked the ground as smooth as we could. This dirt is like flour: its very fine and puffs up with every step.

Along the south wall there were nicely stacked but half-buried steel beams 15 to 18 feet long. Only the top tier of about 4 beams was visible. We knew ahead of time that they were there but we didn’t know how many or what condition they were in so we decided to dig them up also and determine whether any of them were useable. After digging them up, we sorted them to size, eyeballed how truly aligned they were, and determined how badly they were rusted. The steel beams were a single 18 foot long 2X8, about nine 2X6s of similar length and half a dozen 2X4s as well as 8 1X1s we found buried with the debris on the west side of the building. It turned out all of them were useable – we just need some sweat equity to get them in condition – about $3,000 based on current steel market prices.
Here are some of the 2X6s and 2X8s staged for sanding and sealing:And the 2X4s:

Then we looked inside. The warm room was never painted either and it looked like a giant abandoned closet. There were several sofas and desks that we could see. Other junk was piled almost to the ceiling and we could barely squeeze ourselves in between the junk. Fortunately, the previous owner agreed to come out and take it all to the dump himself. I couldn’t figure that out. John and I offered to take care of all of that if he dropped his selling price by $500. On the phone he was about to agree but I heard his wife in the background telling him that he was going to move it himself. We felt it was going to cost him more than that as well as his time but as long as he got it out within a couple of weeks we were fine. The ceiling is made of panels hung from the roof. All of the panels will have to be replaced. We found a small electrical panel inside that had two 15 amp breakers. Power is delivered throughout the site by underground conduits. Our feed was part of a grid laid out over twenty years ago by club members. The main problem is that we have no grid map and all of the original people have moved on. We did know our power originated in a 200 amp main breaker panel about 500 feet away at the club’s observatory and there were several junction boxes along the way. Thirty amps should be enough for our needs with off peak usage but our main concern is how near capacity is that 200 amp box on star party nights. So far there have been no power problems but theoretically the panel must be near capacity when we have our star parties. We have as many as 30 people drawing power from that feed during star parties.

The observing room is about 4 feet higher than the ground level. There is a set of loose cinder blocks that have served as stairs forever. That will be replaced with steel steps and redesigned to give a wider tread. The observing area is in good shape despite open to the sky. There is a single permanent pier in the center of the area that we will remove and I will use as my pier. Two permanent piers will be installed. There is also enough space for John to build a small warm room for his use. There is some construction on top of the cinder block wall that will have to be removed so we c an install our roll off roof track. What is there now is the support structure for the dome that was originally planned. They completed it as far as having an 18 foot diameter track installed.
Summing up the first day, we really had no bad surprises. The very good thing was being pleasantly surprised with all that steel being in such usable condition.

John exhbited his welding skills to make a temporary and moeable fence to keep roaming kids out of our construction area:

The fence in place:

Some of the other club members think we are fooling ourselves with pushing so hard to have the Board approve our project so that we can work through the summer. Most construction activities on site don’t commence until mid-September at the earliest and complete prior to Memorial Day. This particular day was not too bad – temps were in the low 90s but very dry and bright sun. When it is hotter we will definitely have to pace ourselves and make sure we stay hydrated and don’t overheat.

June 15

The OCA Board held a special meeting to review our plans for the observatory as well as one other plan review. It was a standard meeting: everyone showing up by 5 PM for a potluck followed by the meeting at 5:30. The ordinary business agenda was dismissed in order to deal only with the two new observatories.

I have to say that in the previous month or so since the cinder block observatory became available, John and I worked the Board so that their decisions was anti-climactic. John had discussed our plans with three or four of them including the president, at the May astroimagers meeting; I discussed it with two more at the Society for Astronomical Sciences meeting at the end of May. Those people made up more than half the Board and were probably the most influential.

John and I did a tag team presentation - it was like nothing presented in the six years I have been a Board Trustee. I made the presentation and John was the "color" man - he filled in all the technical design details. Typically these presentations would have some very basic drawings and maybe a photo of the site - usually not more than 3 or 4 overheads. Ours was quite different - 20 detailed Autocad drawings and three photos. It was entitled "John and Tom's Excellent Observatory".

First, let me describe and illustrate the observatory design. Below is the floor plan.
The current structure is divided into two sections: a currently roofed over warm room and the telescope room. The warm room is where we control the telescopes from. We're changing it slightly by dividing the warm room into two smaller rooms. One room will be a common room that will be my control area and also have a flat panel TV and a snack table: microwave, coffee maker, etc. The other room will be my sleeping area. Our telescope room is so large, roughly 18 feet on a side, that John will actually build his control/sleeping area there and there will still be room enough for three telescopes.

We had to address the Board's main concerns: staying within building codes, outside appearance, and line of sight issues. The building codes were not an issue - the existing structure had been inspected and approved - we were simply replacing the originally designed roof. The roll off roof is the largest construction we need to make. It will weigh about 4,000 pounds and be on 10 wheels that will roll along a track on the top of the east and west walls of the observatory, continue above the warm room roof and beyond for an additional five feet as shown below.

The photo shows the proposed roof drawn in and its direction of travel. This photo also shows the lack of any impact of the roof on the line of sight for the potentially most compromised observing pad. The roof peak does not even rise above the ridge line in the distance so there is no sky blockage at all.

The roof is the largest and most difficult fabrication we have to make. It will be made of steel trusses and roofed and sided with aluminum. The design of the two end trusses is shown below.

There will be nine mid-truss assemblies with the design shown below:

The roof assembly will ride on ten wheels, each having a load bearing capacity of 2,500 pounds. The wheels will ride on rails on top of the east and west walls with the rails continuing beyond the north wall by five feet. The rail system for the west wall is shown below. The track rail rests on another beam that sits on top of the wall cap of three plates welded together - the wall top and two side plates welded together and then attached with bolts through the cinder block wall. This rail system is for the west wall - note the flat track rail.
The east wall rail is shown below. Note that the track rail has an angle iron welded in the track to accommodate the V-wheel. The two rails are different because the east rail provides the tracking ability and the west rail has a wide, flat track wheel to allow the roof to expand or contract with temperature changes, preventing any binding, especially important with remote operation.
As I said before these rails will extend over the warm room roof another five feet past the north end of the building. We will construct two posts in concrete bases to support that structure as below:

The presentation to the Board lasted about 45 minutes with over 20 diagrams and photos including the ones above. The had more questison tahn noraml depsite the completeness of the presentation. This observatory is in the center of the property and is visible from all areas and has been an eyesore for many years. They knew we were ready for the challenge and we were prepared by design detail we presented but they still needed to reassure themselves that this eye sore would finally be made into a an attractive, prodcutive observatory.

Based on these presented facts, the Board unanimously approved our plans for the observatory. John and I breathed a sigh of relief and accomplishment - we had been waiting for this moment for five years. Within several days, John and I completed the purchase of the observatory.