Yesterday (Dec 9) Peter and I went up to ML to work on the following:
- Remove Heliax cables – Together we were able to remove 29 cables that consisted of a mix of 9-m, 7-m, and 2-m lengths. The cables are stored in the support cone below the telescope and are separated by lengths. We believe we can complete the removal of the Heliax cables within the platform with 2 more days of work (requires two persons).
- Repair right rear exist frame – When we arrived we noticed the metal structure holding the canopy down had broken away. It turn out that the two bolts holding it down were stripped (possibly wrong size to start?) so we replaced them with the correct size. Photo after repair shown here.
- Remove AC plugs for ROACH-2 chassis – When we arrived we found 2 of the 4 ROACH bays were powered up unintentionally via the WTI network power switch, probably as a result of a power failure recovery routine. In order to prevent this from happening in the future we removed the AC power plugs to the rear of all 32 ROACH-2 units. We left the WTI units powered on so that we can perform remote reboots of network switches and other accessories.
- Pull long extension cord from Eaton UPS to Control Container – Being that we will no longer power up the ROACH-2 hardware, we decided to use the large Eaton UPS, model 9170+, to power the PCs and other accessories within the Control Container.
I’ve attached the 6 views of the telescope as it stands today. There is still much to do but hopefully with the stiff Heliax cables out of the way things will go a bit faster.
-Peter, Derek
