Sunday
23rd November 1997 - Good will restored
From
John Storey.....
Yeah,
it turned out all the screws were loose inside, including
the ones that convey electrons from one part of the circuit
to another. When I tightened them up, everything worked again
including the meter with "bad" written on it. This
hardly rates as the major headline event of the day, but it
made a catchy "subject" line.
Actually,
we're finding a lot of loose screws. For example, the screws
holding the ring-gear onto the NISM were finger tight, and
there was considerable slippage. I can't believe we left most
of the screws on our gear so loose, and wonder if the thermal
cycling is to blame.
Last
night I made the mistake of going out to MAPO while Ant was
shovelling snow. I couldn't resist reciting the appropriate
verse from "The Good Ship Venus", which instantly
incurred me the punishment of having to spend the next couple
of hours, shovel in hand, clearing all the remaining snow
away from SPIREX. Meanwhile, Ant and Fred were attaching the
new platform to SPIREX (a job which was completed today).
Fred is from the "locomotive" school of heavy engineering
(the SPIREX azimuth table being made out of 2-inch steel plate,
for example), and there is no doubt that this is one of the
heaviest instrument support platform ever installed on a telescope
smaller than Parkes.
This
morning we sledded the AFOS across to the MAPO building and
spent an amusing hour with the crane (yes, MAPO already has
a crane), lifting things up and down. Eventually we ended
up with both the AFOS and its crate "up" (in the
sense of being inside the building), and some useless piece
of VIPER junk (oops, for a minute there I forgot I'm sending
these messages to Al Harper) down (in the sense of being outside
on the snow). Actually we did ask the VIPER people first.
This made enough space inside MAPO for us to unpack the AFOS
crate, and start putting things in it to ship back to Sydney.
We
began by making a short list of the most revolting substances
known to man:
1.
The brown slime we found in the AASTO
2. Rockwool
3. VXE-6 brown-bag lunches
4. That awful 2-part foam that mcba put in the AFOS crate.
It
is left to the reader to place these in some sort of order.
We
took the primary mirror out of the AFOS and packaged it in
its original cardboard box. It's in great shape. Then we simply
bolted the AFOS back together again, leaving the window in
place. We have great confidence in the ability of the window
cover to provide the necessary protection, but padded everything
well anyway.
We
included the Oriel and CCD, the electronics from the AFOS
(in a sealed plastic bag because its covered in brown slime),
a triangular block of wood that looks terribly important but
we've no idea what it's for, and a plastic bag containing
chemical samples from what used to be valuable pieces of scientific
equipment in the AASTO. I worried a bit about how to get these
through customs, but in the end decided just to put mcba's
name on the box and leave it at that (this is in retaliation
for the 2-part foam).
One
item of some concern is that when we opened the AFOS a little
piece of broken glass fell out. It was very small - maybe
2mm - and at first I thought it was a piece of ice except
it didn't melt. There's no apparent damage to the primary,
secondary or tertiary, so I assume Max just put it in there
as a joke.
We're
really low on fuel here, and they've taken the extraordinary
step of scheduling flights for today even though it's Sunday.
In fact, they've sent 8 of them, all tankers. They've been
arriving all day, but it's very windy and overcast, at times
approaching a complete whiteout. The planes typically have
to do a couple of low passes before they can land, and sometimes
just wander off for half an hour or so while the weather clears.
Six have made it so far today, with the other two still en
route.
Don't
worry about the fibre optic cable ends, Max. We made little
boxes to put them in, then wrapped everything securely in
place.
Andre:
we don't seem to have any male IEC plugs. Did you put them
in, or did you just intend that we steal them from VIPER?
Mcba:
it turns out there are two unused fibres going out to SPIREX.
This will be perfect for the ethernet, and we won't need the
drum of cable that somehow is still at Yerkes. Can you buy
a plug-in ethernet card for the PC with a fibre connector
instead of 10BT? We *think* there is a spare fibre ethernet
port in MAPO for the other end of it; otherwise we need a
10BT - fibre converter box thingy. We'll get back to you on
that.
After
more gear-stress caclculations we've reached the conclusion
that the most likely failure mode of the NISM stepper-motor
drive is that it will crash through the limit switch, wind
the cable up around the elevation axes, drag the elactronics
rack across the floor until the whole AASTO unbalances and
falls over, filling the air intake with snow and shutting
everything down. Should be a minor problem to fix after this
year's disaster!
We
just had a Sunday Night Science Presentation by Jerry Marty
and John Rand (NSF heavies) on the new South Pole Station.
It's a $115m project. (It did occur to me that maybe we could
just flog them Mawson, cheap.) Anyway, it was mainly pretty
dull, *except* for a brilliant synthetic aperture radar image
of the existing station, taken from a satellite in October
this year. It shows all of the subterranean structure, including
the Old Pole Station (where the aliens live), the old runway,
and Pomerantz's old experimental station>.
The
AGO service team have been working hard all today. They've
replaced the platinum beads, the exhaust manifold, the exhaust
shroud, the freon lines, and various things I couldn't identify
but which looked important. They fired the TEG up this afternoon,
but only 4 of the 6 burners came up. They have to leave for
AGO 2 on Tuesday, but are optimistic of getting it all running
tomorrow. As soon as they do, we'll put both the NISM and
MISM on line, and mcba and Max can flog them to death.
Dinner
tomight was steak and giant crab legs, with fresh brocolli
and home made bread.
After
dinner we installed most of the heaters in the Abu box. Every
so often we stick our heads back in the AASTO, but it's still
full of Rockwool and unidentifiable bits of the TEG.
John
 
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