Last night I did a thirty minute talk at the Newport Beach Back Bay Center as part of three presentations by my club, the Orange County Astronomers. Although my talk, which was simply a display of astronomy images taken by club members was well received, the highlight of the evening as far as I was concerned was going outside after the first talk at about 7:40. The center is on the east side of Newport Bay so we had a great view across the bay of the western sky with just a band of sunset no more than ten degrees above the horizon. Just above this band was Venus, shining very brightly. It will be visible in the evening sky for several months. However, just the width of two fingers to the right and slightly lower was Mercury, which was much fainter - in fact almost 80 times fainter then Venus, and just barely visible to these aging eyes. If you would like to catch a view of Mercury - mostly for bragging rights because its really not that impressive - do it over the next couple of nights because Mercury moves very fast and will be moving apparently closer to the sun very quickly.
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Today was a good day at Anza for me. Leaving home at 6:30 I got there in about 1 3/4 hours and avoided most of the commuter traffic. When I arrived there was another member out there overnight but I didn't see him, just his equipment on his pad and his car. He probably had a good night and slept most of the day in the bunk house.
My goal today was to at least finish the wall we've been working on but first, a picture update from last week. Here is the west footing that we've been working on forever. Half of the wooden mold has been removed. The fact that several inches of the mold are buried at the bottom of the footing in concrete is the main problem. Cutting and removing the mold is backbreaking work.
Here is the observing area, specifically the northwest corner. That is where John will be shortly building his own warm room - probably this coming weekend. He built the roof module at home and trucked it out to the site. It is sitting on top off the main warm room roof.
This is John's temporary pier in the southwest corner of the observing area. He has notched the concrete so that the pier feet can sit in the same place for several months. This will be the location of his permanent pier.
We also removed the old permanent pier since it was inefficiently placed dead center of the observing area. You can see it sitting on the right side in front of the blue tarp. I will be mounting that permanently on my side of the observing area. The wire disaster we found and I described last blog is hidden under the red cone in the center and partially blocked by the ARD (Automatic Rain Deterrent) - or the plain old plastic bucket - over John's pier.
Inside the main warm room, we have removed the old fluorescent tube light panels and have replaced them with four of these newer and more efficient panels. John got them for free when renovators at his workplace miscalculated the lighting fixtures and ordered too many. They were going to throw them out when John appropriated them.
Now for today's work. I needed to secure the two interior wall sections to the cinder blocks walls with masonry screws. Then I had to make a brace to span the space for the pocket door kit. Remember that the top sill for each wall section simply butted together. I had to use the brace to splice them together. Then I assembled the pocket door kit - according to the directions which specifically said NOT to remove the small wood spacers that kept the integrity of the door frame during shipment. The problem for me was that I saw two of them - there was a third that I mistook for a strengthening piece. Suffice it to say that later when the kit was assembled, inserted into the space for it in the wall, plumbed and squared, and secured permanently with nails and screws - I realized there was a third spacer that was never mentioned or shown on the directions. This had been causing me problems in truing up the frame that I resolved with several extra houris of unnecessary difficulty. I realized it was a spacer when I removed the two obvious ones and hung the door. When I pushed the door into the frame, the door edge missed being flush with the frame side by about an inch. It should have slid all the way in and hit a rubber bumper on the far inside if the frame. The third spacer was blocking it. Since there were three screws holding the spacer and their heads were now covered by the 2 X 4s of the wall, I had to chisel out the spacer and then cut the protruding screws with a Sawzall. At that point I decided to call it a day. One unexpectedly favorable surprise saved us some work. We had anticipated that we would have to brace the middle of the wall against the rafters to keep it from moving but there is so much strength in the assembly that we can skip that step. Here is a picture of the finally completed wall in the main warm room:
Next week I will try to find a week day to complete the dry wall and start hanging the new ceiling panels. We're hoping to have an estimate on the new roof from Gary by then.
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