trial run

Dietmar and I talked to Phil about supervising at the CAO and getting comfortable with the GBO and its telescopes. We urged Phil to go through an open procedure on his own.

While I repaired a laptop on the back patio, I reminded Phil to check the rails outside the GBO before rolling back the roof.

He started to fire up the mount and laptop. When I heard a rapid beeping coming from the observatory, I knew something had gone wrong. Phil reported that a light on the mount was blinking rapidly along with the fast beep. I gave him a few suggestions, which he put in work. I then hopped into Bisque's web site. It remembered my previous login and I was able to quickly access the forums.

One note suggested the mount was out of balance. Another note suggested a board was bad. Please, not again... I headed to the observatory. Shortly afterwards Dietmar joined us. He, calm, thought it a balance problem.

Dietmar said we should check the clutches. He turned one of the screws, cursing. It was too tight. He walked us through adjusting them. We went to fully released, checked the balance, then we turned until snug (they are reverse-thread!), and then we went the other way 1 or 2 notches. Both axes. Fired up the mount again: all good! Whew!

The OTA is nose heavy but that was without any eyepieces or camera gear. The other axis was pretty well perfect. The massive weights were in good spots.

The laptop needed to be on too, Dietmar said, so that the booting mount could find the serial port. I've never found that to be an issue.

I wonder if whole incident scared Phil... Trial by fire.

We agreed that this was a good item for the "contigency" user guide for supervisors.