[Paul Haese]

A couple of weeks ago I had an incident at one of my observatories. I have a Version 1 dome from Scope Dome. It is completely different from newer models and anyone who owns a new model has nothing to worry about.

The dome was setup for imaging and ready to launch when the dome controller/software decided to have an auto slew.

My dome at the time had an umbilical cord from the main control box on the pier to the shutter controller on the dome. There was an issue in one of the version of the software a few years back that had auto slews regularly occurring. That version was quickly changed and replaced by a newer version. Subsequent editions of the observatory have removed the umbilical cord altogether as cable wrapping could be a problem.

During the auto slew the cord wrapped around the pier several times until it could not wrap any further and then the torque applied by the rotation motor ripped everything apart including the shutter control unit and damaged the declination motor on my MX mount. I am currently undergoing test and help from Software Bisque to remedy the problem with the mount. Today I took delivery of a new set of boards to control the dome thanks to Scope Dome Australia. They redesigned the system to remove the umbilical cord which will require the dome to slew to home before the shutter can close. This is a regular way of doing this for many systems now and there is a proven track record of reliability. It was not cheap to do this but it will fix my dome and will get rid of auto slewing from happening again.

I must say after driving down to the observatories late at night and seeing the damage was traumatic. I did not know where to start and after a few minutes just decided to disengage the shutter drive, lower the shutter, then lock the drive back in place and drive home. I was too traumatized to take a photo of the scope all wrapped up, but have included a shot of the carnage on the floor. The PCB has a crack in it after being flung across the dome and hitting something. It was attached on the side wall where the VSD is located, so too was the bracket.

Now to put it all back together. I'll report once I have done the installation.