I showed up late Friday afternoon, not expecting to get anything done that day but to be able to start almost at sunrise on Saturday. John came out the night before with the intention of imaging but he got clouded out. As it turned out Friday night got clouded out too and by 9 PM we were totally fogged in. It was so dark that if you stepped outside and took only a couple of steps and turned around, you could not see the observatory. A white door light less than fifty feet away did not even make a pale glow - it was completely invisible. We were fortunate because we recently added some things to the place to make it more comfortable. We now have a 36 inch flat screen TV (temporarily until I get a deal on a 46 inch one), a BlueRay player,and a microwave. So we ate popcorn, drank beer, and watched "When Worlds Collide" (one of the few good sci-fi movies from the '50s - and in color) then "2012" before we packed it in. I was able to bunk out in my room which is almost finished, and John slept in his warm room on the observing deck (which is almost completed also). At sunrise the cloud deck was less than several hundred feet up and quite thick, plus it was damp and only in the 50s. As is typical in the desert, within an hour of sunrise the clouds burned off, the sky was blue, the humidity dropped like a stone, but the temps stayed in the mid-70s all day with a light breeze.
Since we had two helpers showing up around 10 AM we were able to work on multiple projects at the same time. John double checked his autocad drawings for the rail and post support measurements while I went to work on what was left of the wood mold on the footings. If you remember, we struggled with that during the winter and decided to back off until the weather got warmer. Here's the east footing and the remaining wood mold:
I was pleasantly surprised because the wood had dried out so much over the winter that I was able to cut it easily and then break it out of the concrete with a sledge hammer. What I thought was going to be a several hour job turned out to be about thirty minutes. When I got the mold off the east pier I found that we had a neighbor:
The only reason I got such a close shot of him was because it was still pretty cool out and his body temperature was down so he could hardly move. Here's a shot of the north side with both footings completed and back filled.
I've just gone to live time now - at 9:26 PM on Monday evening as I'm writing this, we just had an earthquake - house gently swayed for about 15 seconds, pool water is rocking back and forth and almost overflowing - USGS just reported a 5.7 magnitude quake near the Mexican border, 118 miles south-southeast of here.
Okay, back to the important stuff. If your remember from last summer's blogs, I spent a lot of time sanding and priming the steel beams that we inherited from the former owners and were half buried for twenty years. We're finally starting to use them for the rail system. They're in terrific shape but many of the ends are just off being square. Here's a shot of John using a chop saw to even off the edge of one of the pieces that will be the wall cap and the base of the rail: 
That particular piece is a 2 X 6 about nineteen feet long and weighs around 200 pounds. The four of us managed to lift it and one for the other side up onto the roof. Once it was up on the roof and precisely positioned, we closely adjusted its level and extended it beyond the north roof line and over the west footing. John then hung a line down to where the post will attach to the top of the footing. The picture below shows John and his friend Roger taking some measurements. Derek is on the roof.
The measurement indicated that we were within 1/8 inch of our planned height. The other footing showed the same small difference. We were able to cut our lone 2 X 8 into the right lengths for both posts. Here's John cutting the 2 X 8:
One of the things that we have to do also that sounds minor but takes time is beveling the edges of the steel. That is to allow more contact area for when we butt the beam ends and have to weld them together. In the photo below, both posts are cut and stacked and you can see bright steel on their edges from the bevel grinding that we did. 
Actual measurement and cutting of the two rail posts were the major goals for the weekend. This gives John the information he needs to cut additional small steel plates and supports over the following, or current, week at home. Here is a picture from a different angle of the rails put in place for the post measurement: 
While these measurements were going on I was on the observing deck doing the very last of the demolition. We had left the 2 X 6 wood caps on the east and south walls through the winter and now they had to be removed to be able to place the rail system. They were originally bolted to the top of the cinder block wall with the nuts recessed into the 2 X 6. We couldn't figure how they originally screwed the nuts onto the bolts because there was virtually no room to get a socket wrench around the nut. I had to chisel some of the wood away to get enough room to work with. The picture below shows the observing roof area from last summer with all of the steel and wood support we had to remove. 
Compare that to the following picture taken last Saturday from a soemwhat different angle. You can see that the demo has been completed down to the cinder blocks. The bolts sticking up out of the wall need to be cut and then that wall is ready for the rail. This is also a good picture to show the observing area that I will be using. My area is a bit more than 9 feet wide and 17 1/2 feet long. The permanent pier for my telescope will eventually be about where the red vacuum cleaner is sited.
We had another adventure in desert biology. We took a break about 1 PM for lunch and sat around the front door of the observatory in front of my car. As we were eating, a five foot king snake slithered quickly across our driveway under the trunk of my car - no more than fifteen feet away. I was surprised at how fast it moved - I would not have been able to outrun it. Fortunately for us, the king snake leaves peopel alone and is immune to rattlesnake venom and loves to kill and eat them.That pretty much wrapped up what we did on Saturday. We showered and went into town for dinner. By the time we got back we were getting pretty achy and tired but John went ahead and set up his equipment and automated it to image all night. I have a problem with working all day and then imaging all night so I just enjoyed the night sky for a while. It was a beautiful night with the summer Milky Way very bright and even some bright gas nebulae visible as well as the dark rift running down the center of the Milky Way. After a while I headed in and watched another '50s sci-fi classic - "Them" - yup, the one with the giant ants - and then went to sleep.
We did get interrupted with an earthquake at about 9 PM - a 4.9 twenty miles to our southeast. Things have gotten pretty active over the last year.
Sunday we got more done but we certainly were not at the pace of the previous day. We mostly policed the area around the observatory. The steel beams were stacked neatly on the south side and the weeds trimmed as shown:
Also, we worked on the demo pile on the west side. Recently the town dump changed one of its rules - all wood has to be cut to less than five foot lengths so I spent an hour or so doing that:
After it all got cut and stacked it didn't look so big anymore. Of course we have already made several trips to the dump over the winter plus we would carry some of the small stuff home and dispose of it. This weekend I brought home all of the old hanging ceiling panels. 
Finally I'll end this blog with the last picture from the weekend - me posing at the north end of the observatory. San Diego is about eighty miles beyond the nearby ridge. 
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