August 07, 2004

Playing around with Luna- this was acquired with the AP1200 setup on the deck floor of the observatory before installation of the permanent pier.
 

Here's the  mount as it rests inside the dome on the deck floor.  The finished permanent pier will place the scope ~ 1 foot taller and will be sectional to make provision for different telescopes.
 
 

Here is a closeup of the rear area of the shutter with the shutter fully retracted. With careful adjustment of the retaining cable, shutter  motion is smooth  and  very easy. Earlier I had problems with the shutter  hanging up. Note the pool of water on the flashing. This is mid- morning on the west side of the dome. The flashing does remarkably well in both heavy rainfall and typical dewing for a night in the Tennessee Valley.

Here is a neighbor's perspective looking from the other side. Underpinning is in progress and really dresses things up nicely.

06/09/2004  Close up of the metal flashing before caulking and painting.  ( 8 ) pieces were installed and these fit like a glove over the top of my octagonal building. They were made by a custom fab shop per my specifications. Its pretty heavy duty aluminum and looked really sharp but I decided to paint it to minimize maintenance.
 
 

Cool shot of growing thunderhead on 06/02/04 that kept me company while mounting the door.
I got finished just in time for the hail storm !
 
 

Backside of dome showing air intake vent.
 

March 21, 2004
It has  begun!! Finally moving some terra firma....

Decisions, Decisions....First of all where do you put the thing ?? Here in East TN most folks have some sort of hill to deal with on their property so I figured I'd do something  challenging and build the deck on a sloping section of my backyard ;-) Actually that location gives me a great view along the meridian and most of the rest of the sky is accessible as well. The flat part of the backyard is then preserved for the kids to run and play.

The finished hole is approximately 3 feet in diameter and  3 feet deep. The hole is tapered somewhat at the bottom (because I didn't feel like digging it out ). While some people do not advocate this it is a non- issue for me as my frost line is less than 12". If you have a tapered footer the heave from the frost could theoretically push upwards moving your pier undesireably.  The rebar used to construct the cage shown was 24" long sections of  different size bars. Later when the concrete pour was nearly finished I inserted more pieces including 5 that will eventually tie into the concrete pier when poured.

Concrete staged just before the pour. Lesson learned- Its pretty darned hard to mix two 80lb bags of concrete mix in a 6 cubic foot wheelbarrel. Two sixty pounders would be alot  easier to do. When it was all over I would have about (30) 80 lb bags of concrete in the footing.
 

Almost ready to add the pier. To create the key in the center a 4x4 was inserted ~ 12" ( O.k. it was really beat in with a sledge hammer) just as the concrete was setting up. Then carefully removed ~30min later. If you do that its gonna be really to tough extract the post  so you need to drill some holes thought the 4x4 to facilitate adding a handle to assist you when removing it.

Now it's time to center the deck over the pier. It's 12' x 12' and the joists are 2 x 8's. This is actually recycled wood from my previous roll of roof observatory.