June 18 - July 9

This blog is a bit different then the others because it covers over three weeks of work.

I met John at Anza by 9 AM on Friday, 6/18. Once again he came out the evening before and imaged all night - in fact the nights were so nice last weekend that he imaged all night from Thursday thru Sunday - that's almost 24 hours of imaging. Because of the more variable weather back East, many imagers there may take up to an entire year to get that much imaging time. That's why we're out in the high desert.

Even the daytime weather was perfect every weekend day, strong sunshine, temp in the low 80s, very low humidity, light breeze. Our plan for the weekend was to work on the vital steel sections for the rail support system. They are the smaller, more intricate sections that need to be positioned very precisely. With that done, we will be ready for John's friend later in July with the high energy welder for the main rail sections.

The first piece to be fabricated was four feet long with a long outside plate and a shorter inside plate.

This is to be placed on the top of the east wall precisely where the flat top of the observing wall gives way to the sloping shingle roof of the warm room area. This piece needs to be perfectly level because that is where the rail begins to be suspended over the shingle roof and it must be perfectly level with the flat top of the observing area wall and the top of the rail upright. We also made a hole in the shingle roof to have access to the inside wall to attach the inner plate flange. In the image below, we have properly positioned the plate and John is precisely leveling it. Once it was leveled, John drilled the two bolt holes to secure the plate. John's sense of position is amazing. We had previously measured and drilled four bolt holes, two in each side plate. By eye, he was able to drill completely through the cement-filled cinder block and come through the drilled bolt hole on the other side precisely.

We repeated the same procedure on the west wall. That was a bit more difficult because it partly overlapped where John's warm room wall rose above the cinder block wall but that was successful.

Next we went back to the cement footings for the rail supports that we finally back filled the other week. We removed the wooden square on top of each footing that had originally held the four bolts in place. We then fabricated a steel plate to take its place and that would also be the base of the rail support. We hoped to use the chop saw to cut the squares but it did poorly. For some reason it had cut the steel tubes much more easily the other week. We ended up using the Sawzall with a steel cutting blade and that worked well. Then we used a drill press to bore four holes in each plate. When completed we placed them on the footings and they fit perfectly.

We also repeated some measurements now that we have some more steel fabricated. We needed to measure the height for the upright from the footing to where the bottom rail support will be extending from the roof. We had planned on up to a 2 inch shortfall with the upright compared to the actual length - it was 1 3/4 inch. That shortfall is to be accounted for by the bottom plate and its adjusted height above the cement footing.

Once we made that measurement we actually placed the upright in position to confirm the measurement:
Over the next two weeks John worked on strengthening the rail uprights with small side flanges and even bolted the uprights in place. See picture below.

He also fabricated the crosspiece of two parallel bars to secure the two uprights together.
The double bar crosspiece is laying on the ground in this picture. It is 18 feet long and weighs about 300 pounds.

On July 9 I met John at the observatory early for a day of work for me but John, once again, was staying until Sunday to complete more of his control room and possibly the diagonal braces for the rail uprights. The day was nice but the hottest so far - nothing like last year at this time fortunately. The day was partly cloudy, low humidity, and temps in the mid-90s but a nice breeze. One of those days that requires lots of constant drinking water - up to a pint every 30 to 60 minutes.

The first thing we did was raise the double bar to the top of the uprights. The piece weighed close to 300 pounds and is 18 feet long and needed to be raised up almost ten feet. Two of us weren't enough but we were lucky that another member was camped nearby. The three of us took about 30 minutes to raise it in position. We easily raised one end and rested it on the top of the east upright. The double bar fit snugly to either side of the upright.
This is the west upright after the double bar was put in place and clamped. You can see two L-brackets welded to the upright. The inside one is supporting the double bar; the outside one will be supporting a 2 X 8 steel beam on edge and is flush with the upright side. The rail will also extend about five feet beyond the upright.

For the second one, we had to raise the west end to the top of the west upright. To do that we had to hang a bit over the east upright for the proper vertical swing room. Once two of us lifted the west end and held it in a rough position about 4 inches short of the L-bracket on the upright, John started to hammer the east end to nudge it into place. One bar on the west end of the double bar however, had bent inward slightly as a result of the welding done previously. While we continued to hold it in position John attached a reverse clamp to pry the end open slightly, no more than 1/4 inch. Once that was done John continued the hammering and the double bar nudged into position easily. That was a tough ten minutes because two of us had to hold the 300 pound double bar over our heads at almost ten feet until it rested on the L-bracket. Once properly positioned, we secured it with clamps for the next week or two until John's friend comes out with a more powerful welding machine than we currently have.

The two rail uprights and the double bar crosspiece in place with clamps temproarily from the northeast. Palomar Mountain is the blue ridge beyond the osbervatory roof at the horizon.

The uprights and double bar from the north (Note that the Quikrete has not been buried at this point.)

That was the toughest part of the day.

We also worked in my control room. We made some space by removing the 18 sixty pound bags of Quikrete that had been stored there on cinder blocks since last fall. The Quikrete picked up moisture over the winter and turned into solid blocks that we could no longer use. We thought about how to get rid of them and decided to bury them on the hillside above the north wall. We dug a long trench and placed them two high.

Then we back filled the dirt over the Quikrete as well as some dirt from excavating more of the north hillside.The disturbed area where the Quikrete is buried is about a foot higher than the surroundign ground. It is to help to guide any rain runoff from the slope above us away from the observatory and into a swale we dug by the far bushes.

Then we put paneling on the wall facing the control room.

Finally, we ended the day by attaching a handrail by the stairs going up to the observing area and tightening up the treads we built over the winter.Over the next month we plan on completing the rail system on the roof. We had good news from our friend Gary who is building the roof sections off site. He has completed fabricating all the roof sections and is waiting for us to complete the rail system to deliver the sections and assemble them. I should have some pics of these sections in a few days.