Starting the Seuss House

Hon was up all weekend and anxious to show off her carpentry skills so

we started with framing up the floor section, boxing in one side with 1/2 inch plywood, then applied a thick coat of paint before flipping them over on there 4X4 skids.

The two sections were joined together and the boxed in cavities filled with R-19 rated insulation then covered with 3/4 plywood flooring.

Then the framing began.

Our fist surprise is that 16 feet looks pretty tall,

but in thinking back to storage building construction I recall that one day it looks huge and the next day small and now that it's full of crap it looks tiny, so I think this warm room will also even out.

Besides her unbelievable carpentry skills, Pat has always been our landscaping expert. She brought up the first Seuss shrub that got planted Saturday and looks great.

Other then that I'll find someone next week to help reinstall the scope and work will continue on the warm room with should include no fewer then 6 trips to the lumber yard!

Frustration and Disappointment Dealing with Meade

Well we learned a lot about Meade this week.

On Monday, according to Meade, the scope had to be sent back to be repaired, on Tuesday they needed a serial number to look up the scope's history, Wednesday we heard nothing, Thursday we got the word to pull it down and box it up and Meade was setting up trucking and on Friday Meade now claims they had a meeting and the Scope is fine and will work as-is, so they are doing nothing.

Apparently this quality of craftsmanship is OK with Meade,

after all it's just a telescope we spent a lot of money on, then installed it in a expensive Observatory and added another $4000.00 dollars purchasing a camera and focuser, so how precise does the telescope have to be? It's not like they are building Swiss watches.

If I have my way, this will be the one and only Meade telescope Murmur Creek Observatory will ever mount on it's pier.

The only bright spot Thursday was this view out the dome.

Lester showed up early and we got to work. It took about an hour and we had it carefully lowered into the shipping box, not an easy job inside the dome,. After binding up the box I pulled the stair railing off along with one side wall to make a path out as wide as I could. Our plan was to load it in my truck and drive it into town on whatever day the trucking company is coming to pick it up.

With today's news I now have to unpack and reinstall the scope on the pier, but it's getting harder to find strong backs and weak minded helpers that still answer their phones.

I did get a start on the warm room in between rain showers, photos to come later this weekend, but I just had to bitch about Meade first.

Huge Setback and Very Disappointed

Life is good when the highs are higher than the lows are low.

Well last week everything was looking good only to drop to a new low. On Tuesday Sept 24 our Starizona MicroTouch AutoFocuser unit and the color filters showed up so I started getting ready to install the compete assembly including the CCD camera.

The focuser is a beautiful piece of machine work that came with a shorty adapter allowing the installation of our QSI 583 Camera without clearance issues.

Here is the complete unit less the power motor that installs in place of that gold colored knob. The black rubber cover on top of the camera is for a second guide camera that controls the telescope during multiple exposures.

When Pat and I went out Saturday afternoon to test fit all this new gear, we were shocked to remove the rear cover of the telescope and find a lot of damage including mashed threads and a ripped up aluminum internal flange.

Here is a photo of the damage.

I called Jim Sunday night with the bad news and emailed him all the photos, he will have to be the one to deal with Meade.

Today I got the bad news that I'll have to take the scope down, pack it up and ship it back to Meade.

This just sucks!!!

I'll get it shipped this week, keep working on the warm room and hope we get it back by the end of October. I guess we will find out what kind of company Meade really is. This telescope was purchased as a refurbished item but in my opinion this damage could have only happened during assembly of the scope.

Stairs, Carpet, lighting and Clean-up

Sorry I've been slow to blog but things have been crazy around here lately, so I'll try to catch you up.

The end of August we had a lot of visitors including Stuart and Anita, friends from Georgia, this being their first trip to our remote site. Stuart used all his deep woods navigation skills and his vast local knowledge of Cook County to make the 17 minute trip in just under one hour. (Stuart you know I poke fun cause I care and the boys at breakfast miss you!)

Anita emailed me this photo she took during the visit, her email also stated that it's a magical place and I have to say I love that description, thanks.

The deck top when on well and I also boxed in the pier and started to design and build the stairs

Then the deck was covered with 18" square black carpet tiles and the lighting layout began.

The red rope lights are from Ax Man surplus and worked out great. Once the pier cover is painted black it won't glow any more and we also ran lights down the edge the stairs to make them very visible.

Last week I made the run to Duluth for warming room building materials so the Dr Seuss house will get it's start this week. Our neighbors, Bill and Jackie, donated a very nice window to the cause and we thank them for that.

Telescope Boot-Up & Perfect Granddaughter

Thursday we installed batteries and brought the scope to life.

We were lucky no none was killed.

Reading the manual by flashlight, we tried a polar alignment and I have to say it was a little spooky seeing the big telescope moving on its own.

Then we tried to focus in on something but we quickly decided we may as well have been looking up a goats ass, so we decided maybe a little more daylight manual reading is in order.

Friday morning I drove to the cities to see my son and his family who traveled in from New York with our new granddaughter Helena, Leni for short. Now I'm not much for babies but the only word I can come up with for her is Perfect and I do mean Perfect.

It was fun to see everyone, Pat's sister Sue and her husband Doug threw a great pool/dinner party on Saturday for the entire family. It's amazing how much fun kids have in pools.

Back up north Sunday night.

Monday I pulled down the scaffolding and started measuring for the raised platform that's needed because we chose to build with taller walls and door.

Total of 30" of lift will give us a nice eye piece height along with storage underneath for things like snow removal tools. So far the only tricky part is going to be the stairs

and remembering not to hit your head going up.

Very Big Week

Monday was sandblasting and paint day.

Sandblasting, on my fun shit-o-meter, is around a negative 5, just above going to the dentist for a root canal, but it went well.

The paint is a flat black spray can combination primer/paint that coated nicely and covered with only 3 applications. Tuesday was drying day.

Newly painted and sandblasted pier and wedge.

Jim arrived on Tuesday afternoon bringing all kinds of goodies with him including the CCD camera and it's manual, Photoshop 8, Photoshop Astronomy and a DVD astronomy course from the University of California, Berkeley entitled

Understanding the Universe.

He had told me last week how large the camera manual was, and I have to say the man does not exaggerate. The damn thing is huge. Watch for a separate blog posting on the camera later.

Earlier, I had also test fitted the wedge base plate to the bottom of the telescope and then packed the scope back into the shipping box for the last 3 mile trip to it's new home and I put up a set of scaffolding in the newly cleaned observatory.

Wednesday Jim was all fired up to mount the scope so we started by putting up the second set of scaffolding and then planking across the back of both scaffolds.

Then a trip out to the storage building for the telescope box and the wedge. When we got back to the observatory we placed the scope box on the rear planking and the wedge under the right set of scaffolding.

On the second trip we hauled the steel pier over, carried it in and installed it to the concrete pier. We then leveled it and tightened down the 3/4 inch anchor bolts.

On our third trip we picked up Jim's wife Michelle and headed into Grand Marais for lunch and 10 bags of sand to fill the steel pier, a must to deaden any ringing vibration if the pier is bumped. On the way back Jim asked Michelle if she would help us out and the three of us now had some heavy work to get done.

Filling the pier with sand was no big deal but lifting the 168 pound wedge from the floor to the top of the 6' tall pier hurt pretty good and we still had to lift the man killer telescope. It was even difficult getting the lid off the scope box inside the observatory with such limited room! With Michelle on a step ladder where she could see the bolt holes, we made the big lift and got the center bolt started, the other three bolts went right in and we then celebrated with Advil all around!

It was nice just to sit and look over all this hard work coming together.

Lots of Things Coming Together

Jim's been doing research and ordered the CCD camera, auto focuser and filters, and some of the items are being custom made to eliminate clearance issues.

The CCD camera has arrived and Jim is bringing it when they come up on Tuesday, I can't wait! The auto focuser is still a week or two away. Jim also mentioned that he had printed the CCD camera manual, a large three ring binder with 12 tabs. He's thinking it might be complicated, so do I.

The steel pier and wedge is back at the storage building and will get sandblasted and painted tomorrow. I had hoped to be done with this job, but the humidity has been very high making this kind of work next to impossible.

The heated control room building design is now final, I've done a lot of image searching on goggle for unusual small building and my favorite came on the Dr. Seuss Playhouse search.

Here is the link where I found it,

Playhouse.

"The playhouse was designed and built by Rohan Goel, for his IB project and then raffled off"

I did build a small model to see if it scaled up larger without losing it's charm and it does work out just fine, construction will begin at the end of the month.

More planting this weekend when Pat was up, she has the grounds looking great, everything growing nicely including the grass and so far only 2 plants that our local deer, Bucky, just had to eat.

We are also looking into a set of tracks from American Track Truck for winter access to the observatory without spending half our lives plowing snow.

Here's a photo from their site, this system would make the 3 mile trip safe and warm.

Visual Learner and Wedge Building

I'm a visual learner so before I can build anything, I need a clear picture in my mind of the item I'm designing.

The process of wedge design was somewhat painful for a few reasons, first I was having trouble seeing the known angle of 47 degrees 44' 22". I just could not work out whether this angle was off the horizontal or vertical, so I had to call in the high paid help again.

Sam Parker is our project surveyor and a bit of an astronomy buff himself and thanks to Sam's help I was able to see it clearly. That man is worth every dime we're spending with his firm.

The second stumbling point was the design itself. A quick Internet search shows great diversity in wedge building, you can pivot the scope mounting plate from the top, middle, bottom or anywhere in between.

I would come up with an idea, let it roll around for a day, then change my mind, then change it again! This went on for weeks and last Friday I decided it had to stop. I made a call to Tom at Last Chance Fabricating asking for some more shop time and he was kind enough to agree. I figured about 8 to 10 hours would cover it and I only missed that time estimate

by 3 days (not bad) .

I started by cutting the base and telescope mounting plate out of 3/4" steel. I then welded 1/2" steel flat stock under the base to hold the bearings in place along with welding the 3/4" shaft on the scope mount

The triangular cantilever support is cut from 1/2" steel plate, heavy 6" square tubing with 8" disks welded to the bottom which will insert into the steel portion of the pier.

This photo shows cardboard patterns, I cut out a few designs before becoming happy with this one.

Installation of the 8" disks and side cut outs, now just need to finish up the welding and grinding.

Top view of the angle adjustment, the telescope mounting plate is trapped between two 1/2" thick pieces of flat stock that are drilled and taped for 3/8" fine threaded cap screws.

This allows for 5 degrees of total movement, that's 2-1/2 degrees both sides of my target setting.

Front view of adjustment screws.

Complete pier ready for sandblasting and paint, total weight around 400 lbs, not including the sand filling after installation. A special thanks again to Tom for the shop time, you can see what he's working on by looking on his blog or web site .