Assembly almost done

The major assembly of the telescope is nearly finished. We have reached the six-week mark, and Albert has left for a week-long trip home. We hope to have everything done in two weeks.


Marius left for home a couple of weeks ago, and was replaced by Nathan, but here is an old photo of Marius painting the saddlebags. He and Dave took a lot of abuse for how they went from space-qualifies looking before the paint job to little rascals clubhouse looking after the paintjob, but the automotive paint will do the job, and it was a pretty smelly and messy job. I still think that Marius has some paint on him somewhere. The saddlebags are now installed, thanks to a very careful layout job from Brian and some help from Mike with the forklift. I am afraid that we will need a taller ladder to reach these saddlebags.



The baffles have been slowly going on for the last couple of weeks. The panels go on like a complicated 3D puzzle, where each piece had to be slightly trimmed to fit. "Tony" got a lot of grief for this job also.


We had one baffle casualty when a dust devil caught a sheet before it was fully attached. The sheet metal was somewhat mangled, but they banged it back into shape and I think it is okay for now. I will request a new one when more baffles are being made.



The last major piece went in a couple of days ago when we finally installed the cryo mass dummy. Al decided to install the frame first, then the ballast weight second. You can just barely see the Pullz-all that we used to hoist things into place. The manlift stood in for the eventual gantry that needs to be made here (80/20 Marius?).

Tony did not get any credit for how everythign fit together on the first try, because Tony did not fabricate these parts.


Here you can see the weights installed. It is a little scary to stand right below these weights, so I dont recommend it.


Here is how the telescope looks now.The look is basically how it will be for the next few months. A few more panels need to fabricated aroud the secondary, and an enclosure the the reciver will need to go on, but it wont look much different.


With the assembly winding down, I am trying to figure out the exit strategy. Of course, the major outstanding item is the servo, more on that later. Brian will be working refining the secondary adjuster of the next week, and I think that we will need substantially more counterweight, we seem to be heavy toward the lower boom, but I am not quite sure yet.