Author: Jared Males

MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Day -1: Almost There

Well we made it through customs, and are on a truck. We expect delivery of MagAO-X to LCO around 2 pm local time tomorrow afternoon.

Otherwise, it was all MagAO-C all the time.

I learned about the dome camera today. You can see Katie and Alex at the lower right, they’re working on Clio’s cables.
A cuddly looking vizcacha. They are almost tame this year.
If the drive goes smoothly tomorrow (which given recent luck, keep your fingers crossed), this is the last sunset at LCO without MagAO-X (for a while).

If you’ve ever been to an NBA game, you’ll recognize this song. If MagAO-X arrives safely, I plan to make Laird, Kyle, and Alex perform this dance to celebrate.

MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Day -2 (-1?): Santiago!

MagAO-X arrived in Santiago yesterday! There’s even a chance that it gets to LCO tomorrow. My plan has been to call “Day 0” the day it actually arrives, so maybe we have to reset the blog counter.

Alex v2 and Kyle arrive today. Other than Jared and Laird worrying about it, no MagAO-X work was done today.

So here’s another sunset panorama.

This one is from the back deck of the lodge.

The goats are a new thing for us. We always see them on the drive, but only lower down. They poop everywhere.

The last several days of being unable to get any information about where our precious cargo was has been pretty maddening. It’s 2019 … almost 2020! One expects to not go 5 days without a status update. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I knew that it had officially arrived from our friends here hours before they updated their system.

The song of the day is Gaga’s Telephone. The blog standards committee won’t let me post the official one, so hopefully this works for you.

MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Day -3 (estimated): Still Waiting

MagAO-X is probably in Santiago.  But the shipper isn’t updating their website, so . . .

We unpacked some stuff that we shipped down to help with MagAO-X, so it wasn’t all MagAO-C.

Unpacking counts as work on a project.
Hopefully this stuff has a reason for being here.
Some horses are hanging around the lodge.
Sunset panorama from the lodge from last night.

The MagAO-X song of the day is Alive, by Pearl Jam:

MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Day -4 (estimated): Waiting

Laird and I arrived back at LCO last night. It’s been 18 months since we were here. Lots of little changes, and some new faces around the mountain — but it’s mostly the same as it ever was.

We’re supposed to be unpacking our new instrument MagAO-X. But . . . our shipment has been delayed by the goings-on in Chile. We also have to get MagAO-Classic back up and running, so I guess that’s what we’re working on right now.

If you look hard enough, you’ll see Laird pointing at the sign for the domestic terminal security sign. All of the parts of Chile that we interacted with seem normal, if maybe a little less crowded due to the holiday weekend.
Our old friends, Clay and Baade. Looking good.
Our first LCO sunset in 18 months
A cleanroom vizcacha!
And another one!

We’ve been working on MagAO-X so much that MagAO-Classic seems just a little bit unfamiliar.  Now that we’ve spent a day getting the ole’ system back up and running, it’s easy to see how much of MagAO is in the new MagAO-X.

MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking: Blog Rules

The following rules will be followed on the MagAO-X unpacking run.  There is a MagAO-Classic run going on at the same time, which will have separate rules.

(1) There will be a blog post each day

(2) Each blog post will have a song of the day

(3) The MagAO-X song of the day must be related to the MagAO song of the day from the latest MagAO@LCO blog post.

The last time we were are LCO, we (Laird, Joseph, and I) had a extra arduous trip home.  We finally made it.  But now that we’re back at LCO, it’s like coming home the other way.

MagAO 2018A Day N: Still Not Home

We left LCO 48 hours ago.

When we got to La Florida airport in La Serena, it was foggy. And it got foggier. So as we waited for our plane to land so we could board it and travel home, we slowly lost sight of the runway. Then we heard the plane as it buzzed the runway and decided it couldn’t land. That’s a bad feeling.

The official hotel of MagAO, the Casino Enjoy, was full. So we had to downgrade and check into the Costa Real — a.k.a. the GPI hotel.

At the Costa Real Hotel bar, working on getting flights for the next day.
We got complementary empanadas con queso, at least

We ended up with essentially the same itinerary, 24 hours later. So we got some time for a walk around La Serena.

The view of our La Serena street corner

It’s actually been 5 or so years since we bothered to spend time in La Serena. La Recova is the same.

We remembered the La Recova fountain.
La Recova

We are now in Dallas. As we landed at 5 am this morning we were greated to notifications that our flight to Tucson was delayed 20 minutes. The delay has continued to grow.

The text messages received by Joseph in the span of a few hours

Our next major problem was that the first officer’s chair was broken. We were actually buckled in and ready to go, then they kicked us off to repair the chair. Deplaning number 1.

Here we are in an Airport restaraunt, after deplaning.

So. Next. We got on the plane, a little faster having rehearsed once. Everything looked good. Pushed back, taxied for a while, and then stopped. After sitting for a bit, the skipper got back on and started with “Well folks, I guess it’s one of those days . . .” Apparently a fuel gage problem, so we pulled back to a (different) gate.

And then the cops boarded the plane. Yeah.

So we aren’t home yet. We’re back in the terminal in DFW, waiting to board a different plane and try again. We are making lots of friends here in the refugee camp, and AA is giving out free food.

Refugee camp A21. The free pretzels made Laird unreasonably happy.

I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow. I’ll probably still be wearing the same clothes though.

Update:

I’ve been trying to make it home
Got to make it, before too long
Oh I can’t take this, very much longer…

We finally made it:

Your intrepid adventurers in Tucson at last, with luggage in hand.

I’ll admit that I expected my Uber to break down the whole way home.