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.

May, 2009

May, 2009 - The Orange County Astronomers have owned 17 acres in the high desert since the early 1980s for the club’s use as a dark sky site, far away from man-made lights. The site is 25 miles east of Temecula, 25 miles south of Palm Springs, and for the astronomically inclined – 12 miles northeast of Palomar Observatory. The factors of distance from artificial lights, an altitude of 4,600 feet, and the steady air that led to Palomar being built nearby, results in one of the top three amateur astronomy sites in California, if not the country.

The club's property is partially developed and is bounded by the three roads seen from the Google aerial photograph below.

Currently the site comprises about 50 leased and free observatory pads, about 12 private observatories, an 8 bed, 2 kitchen, 2 bath bunkhouse, and a club observatory housing the Kuhn telescope, and a 22 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain that was instrumental in making a number of supernovae discoveries. Other observing areas include the “RV Area” and “Last Members In” area.

For almost five years the club has tried to get various approvals for a major grading project of the northwest section of the property to develop more flat area for observatories and pads. Its not evident from the photo but the topography varies by almost 80 feet in that area. John and I have been waiting very patiently that entire time for the project to be approved so we could build our own joint observatory. By last fall the club had completed all county required permits and applications for the grading at a cost of almost $8,000 when the county reclassified our site as commercial despite our continuing non-profit status. New permits and applications that were now required would total almost $30,000 and another several years of volunteer time. The club looked for other options and realized that there were two small areas that were graded more than twenty years ago and was now overgrown but would not need any grading. This was enough space for five observatories.

Since John and I were first on the list we selected the best location in our opinion and it can be seen in the photo with the building outline drawn in.

However, an unexpected second choice appeared in mid-May when a partially built observatory became available. It’s the small building that seems to have a circle over part of it in the aerial photo below.

The story is that two friends began the structure twenty years ago. They did a great job with cinder block walls reinforced with rebar and filled with cement. However, before they could build the dome, one of them got married and his new wife did not want him to have anything to do with astronomy – so the story goes. The project was too big for one person to complete so it sat there unused. Neither owner wanted to sell because they had hopes of someday completing it. By this May they finally decided to sell it. We were interested but there could be some major snags along the way. The club requires that all observatories meet local codes before they will even consider allowing the construction. We doubted if anything like that existed for this structure. If they did not, we would stay with building the brand new observatory which would be a known entity. Also there is a lot of work to re-furbish the old observatory after twenty years.

Meanwhile the club Board was asking us to make a final decision about the new observatory site because the other potential owners of the other sites could not choose theirs' until we made up our minds. We definitely wanted the cinder block observatory because we could see the much greater potential there despite the larger amount of work involved. Fortunately, the original builders of the cinder block observatory did have lots of documents and approvals, including one that was a final approved inspection of the observatory from 1987. More pressure from the Board to make up our minds on the new site but we didn’t want to choose until the Board gave us their approval at a Board meeting that was not scheduled until late July. Seeing how we were standing firm about awaiting the Board, they decided to hold a special Board meeting in mid-June to review our documents and plans for completing the cinder block observatory.

Intro

Hi everyone!

I'm opening this blog as an experiment to talk about astronomnical topics and questions you may have - there is plenty of misinformation out there. Mostly however, I'm going ot talk about the evolution osf something I've been eanting to do for decades - have my own astronomical observatory. If this goes well, I may graduate to a my own website in the future.

The observatory experience began several months ago, so over the next week or so, I will be writing extensively and maybe excruciatingly (to some) to bring the story up to date. Thus far, I have written several aricles about this expeirience in the monthly newsletter of my original astronomy club - the New Jersey Astronomical Association - but felt limited with the space available. Here, I can write as much as I want to satisfy my need to share this experience. People reading blog will decide for themselves when I have gotten out of hand and can click me off.

Please give me feedback about how I'm doing, or with your questions about any astronomical topic.