The lower boom

In addition to fussing over the mirros, Al has been preparing for the last part of the major assembly, installing the lower boom. Al got a lift bucket to show up today, and we should have it for the next month. The bucket made it a lot easier to do all the bolts on the main boom flange. It is quite a piece of equipment, and we had to disconnect the power in order to get it in place.




BZ prepared by leveling the boom. We learned from our earlier mistake- you shouls lift parts as level as you can before trying to assemble.


















Here is the lower boom in the air. Daniel is running the tag line, and Brian is in the upper boom ready to use the spud wrench to get the holes to line up.







After banging all the bolts on with a very loud impact wrench, they went to install the reflector Backing structure.



















And finally, this is how it was left. Assembly can go very quickly if all the parts are lined up. We are now only held up by trying to get the adapters into the mirrors, and I was up there trying to do some more grinding. I was up there late enough to get the sun setting over the sierras onto the boom. The sun sets really fast these days.