In the past week we had great guys from Crane Services out to the HET to remove the old tracker bridge from the dome, move the new lower X and upper X assemblies onto the dome floor, and move the VSS into place. It all went very smoothly and they finished on Thursday about 1 hour before a small windstorm (by West Texas standards) moved in.
There are numerous pictures taken by:
Dave Doss of the Old Tracker lift
Dave Doss of the VSS installation
and here is a picture of the tracker removal taken from Renny Spencer who was purposefully stranded up on the upper X beam to monitor the lift.
There is even a movie produced by Eusebio Terrazas:
This next week we will be tuning up the VSS, putting in the diagonal bracing and getting ready to hook it up to the air bearing system. Other work at the HET includes putting in cableways in the lower electrical room and spectrograph room, stripping the old coating from the primary mirror segments that were removed before the upgrade began, and applying extra sealant to the dome nodes.