Something different

This afternoon Rolando, Adam and I decide to take few hours off and went to Termas de Puritama to soak in the warm, mineral waters that form a series of cascading pools at the bottom of a canyon about 30 Km north of San Pedro. It was indescribably pleasant and visually stunning: the view of the ribbon of luscious vegetation at the bottom of a canyon carved through barren land comes at you completely unexpected.

Cheshire Act

Few more panels and the telescope will no longer be visible, hopefully we will all have smiles on our faces. While ConPax is working on finishing the ground screen we are trying to get the mirror panels aligned and Mike and Jeff (Kuka Robotics) are working on getting the azimuth and elevation servo systems tuned.

Panels & Panels

Since the ground screen frame has been completed ConPax has been working on installing all the panels that form the actual ground screen; it's a slow process often hampered by strong winds. Furthermore this week we had a work-crew change on Tuesday, Friday was a holiday and we have only a reduced crew for the Easter weekend. In the meanwhile we worked on aligning the 71 aluminum panels that form the primary mirror and the 15 that form the secondary one.

Eppur si muove...

After reconnecting all the control electronics we tested both azimuth and elevation motion; it was a very smooth first test.

Done

Today the construction of the Ground Screen frame was completed, soon all the panels will be installed and it would become more difficult to actually view the Telescope.

Almost there...

The ground shield frame that surrounds the telescope is nearly finished, the last supporting stand should go up tomorrow morning together with the remaining cross members. The panels will take probably another week. Today the also delivered the new generators and we received some material from AMEC that was left behind. Mike Cozza and Jeff Funke (Kuka) arrived later this evening, soon we could have the telescope moving.

Steady progress

Between being very busy and the network behaving badly it's been more than a week since my last post. A lot has happened. Lyman has left on Sunday morning and on the same day in the evening Rolando Dunner arrived from Santiago. We have installed the new final cables between the generator and the Equipment Room (ER) in buried PVC conduit. We also have installed a Cat 5 cable in another buried conduit between the ER and the communication tower. Most of the cables connecting the motion control cabinet (Kuka cabinet) and the telescope are neatly laid down in the trays and connected. The two racks in the ER are also being populated with computers and network equipments. Meanwhile ConPax is busy finishing the ground screen, the frame is more than 50% completed and nearly all the two first panels rows are installed.