Monthly Archives: December 2013

The week of Dec 23

Despite the Holiday break we are having contractors work over the break both on the electrical power in the lower electrical room (for the new tracker) and in the dome working on the new in-floor trench for the liquid nitrogen, glycol and nitrogen gas.

In the past week we have finished the weldments on lower and upper X. This allowed us to lift the rail adaptors into place. We finished the touch-up painting of the lower and upper X beams to cover up the welding work.

The next update will be on the 2nd or 3rd of January.

Happy Holidays everyone.

The week of December 9

Last week the electrical team finished straight pieces for the cable runs up the side of the telescope and have to purchase the transition curved pieces to finish the cableways. Weathers Electric started work on the improvements we require for the new tracker. This is likely to take 4-6 weeks but they made some progress outside with the conduit. Veliez construction was on site over the weekend cutting concrete paths for the glycol, liquid nitrogen, power etc.. They finished their concrete cuts. We had our Board of Directors meeting this past weekend and they had a chance to see all of our progress in the Wide Field Upgrade. The next board meeting will be in June also out at McDonald so that they can see the completed Wide Field Upgrade.

This week we will be finishing the weldments and then painting them. Weathers electric will continue work on site, mostly on the outside conduit. Veliez construction will be back on site later in the week to jack-hammer out the concrete cuts and then line and level the trenches. They hope to finish that effort this next weekend.

The week of Dec 2

In the past week we had a very significant power outage caused by a large snow/ice storm. The outage lasted from Saturday Nov 23 until Tuesday Nov 26. The next day was spent getting all of our subsystems back up and checked. Thankfully no permanent damage was found to the facility but this has put us about 3 days behind schedule for all activities.

Since the last blog posting we have gotten a start on a number of projects high up on the tracker including: mounting the lower X work platform and handrails, modification of the lower and upper X screw weldments, welding on the lower X cable tray brackets, positioning of the lower and upper X screw mount weldments.

This week we will be welding on the upper hex weldments and installing the DAS-box weldments. When the JLG manlift is not in use by the welding team the electrical team will be installing the cable trays up the side of the structure or rearranging the azimuth cable wrap.

We also have Weathers Electric and Veliz Construction on site setting up power to the lower electrical room and cutting slots in the dome floor for the additional glycol, power, nitrogen and liquid nitrogen lines.

A very busy week….. Just in time for our Board of Directors meeting this weekend.