“You’re back again, so soon…!” Said Hernan as we passed by him walking to the MagAO storage crate to retrieve some steel toe boots for tomorrow. Here’s a quick play-by-play of travel and arrival day for the first wave of the 2024Ab crew:
Well after the ride up we got right to work!
At the end of the last run we ran into an issue with one of the screw jacks in the legs. It became stuck to the point that any more torque applied to the bolt probably would have snapped the Allen wrench, but we managed to get the bottom of the bolt ~1 mm off the ground before it stopped moving completely. We then limped the legs back into the corner of the cleanroom, and here we are now with MagAO-X needing to be re-legged tomorrow morning which can’t be done in case the screw drags on the floor. Thankfully, Juan and his crew came to rescue and with a few squirts of some delicious WD-40 and with some TLC were able to remove the bolt! They even chased the threads with a die and tap to clean them up and applied some grease for good measure.
Unfortunately it wasn’t all W’s in the cleanroom today. We found out that one out of the two fancy new curved monitors meant for the observer station suffered some damage sometime during transit to the cleanroom.
2024Ab blog rules
We’ll stick to keeping it simple this time ’round for the blog rules, so, Song of the Day still applies (all posts must end with a YouTube embed of a song) *and* all posts must include a description of the best 15 minutes of that day/night. The description can include as much or as little detail as needed, and is subjective.
The best 15 minutes of Day 0 was probably meeting up with Juan’s crew in the cleanroom and freeing the stuck screw jack on one corner of MagAO-X’s legs. Having built and daily driven a 1973 VW Bug in my youthen years, I’ve lost many nights of sleep over stuck nuts and bolts. Seeing that bolt finally come free after fighting so hard with it at the end of 2023Aa was honestly a genuine feeling of relief. You had to be there, I guess.
Song of the Day
Folks, it’s cold up here on the mountain. Please bring some of the Tucson warmth with you, we’re gonna need it.