After a hiatus of 6 months or so I've gone ahead and ordered the tin shed for my Observatory build. Made the decision after three glorious clear nights of which I managed to view on only one of them.
Monday night I set up on the driveway to attempt to get guiding working and test my mod to get the DSLR to focal point ( fail again !! ). Stunning night and although both projects failed to deliver I even managed to find Sombrero over the city and run the DSLR through a small telephoto mounted on top of the truss cage.
Tuesday night also promised to be an exceptional night but my wife is going through a job change and we spent most of the evening discussing options and scenarios. She went to bed about 9 pm, too late for me to setup.
Wednesday also was a stunner but again similar family committments at home put an end to any viewing possibilities. Again my wife went to bed about 9 pm.
When she went to bed I got onto TradeMe and bought the tin shed. My biggest problem is as others have, the time to setup before any viewing etc can be done. Had I got an Ob up and running, at 9 pm I could be quite happy to wander out and kickstart it and do a couple of hours out there. I don't sleep before about 11 pm.
I have a novel roof shift design posted in an earlier thread which should make for quite a cheap ( comparatively) build and I will document and discuss it on here for anyone looking for ideas.
So 'SkySlab' is officially under way ( and having publicly posted it here I better get on with it
).
I pick up the kitset on the weekend. It is 2.7 x 1.8 meter with a flat sloping roof and cost $390 NZ. It will sit on my already built platform based around the 'Sewer Pipe' pier out on the 4 x 4 meter concrete slab in my backyard. Probably needs about $200 of timber to strengthen and frame the structure. Look out Bunnings, here I come again.
Any encouragement and swift kicks in the derriere to keep me on task are appreciated.
