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Got the deck taken out, and my buddy and his small crew put in an 18 inch round pier with a T base 5 feet deep. The dirt in my hill is super strong and solid, and I'm guessing that pier base isn't moving at all if much at all. Just levelled the J bolts (except he used screws with flat square 3 inch plates on the end. It'll be solid. So, that part is done. Monday they install the actual deck, should be done my tuesday. Wed. my observatory shows up. Can't wait.
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Sounds like it'll be plenty solid Charles. I went 40" deep and 24" square on both of mine and the only movement I got was during the last couple of earthquakes we had. No damage so life is good :)
Cannot wait for first light!
finally, the new OTA is being shipped this week. Last touches to this whole process
Every other time the dome would stop rotating when the open slit got to the motors. So i got more motors and just installed them in like 90 degree heat, and low and behold, no turning problems now. STOKED. FINALLY.
I was a little misaligned. 100+ arc seconds off in azimuth and 200 arc sec off in altitude. Tpoint alignment said I was spot on, but perhaps I slewed and aligned on the wrong stars or something, becuase clearly I wasn't. So I went to pempro again, figuring that pempro aquires real drift data without calculations so it's better. So I spent a long time really nailing it out, figured that the fog is rolling in so i might as well get it aligned properly. Got to 5.7 arc sec off in azimuth and 4.2 in altitude. That's pretty solid.
Am going to do PEC on the setup tomorrow night as I'm sure I'll only have a few hours to fiddle.
Charles, looks like you're about good to go-psyched. Marc
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