Billys Rotating Roof "Shed"

[Psychobilly]

Pics have been posted else where but I'll pull the text and pics together from another place and post them here...

Here's the essentially finished (exterior only) V2 obs...

Pics of the early stages have gone from the other place... oh well will have to try and find them elsewhere...

OK what I have found so far...

Initially there wasn't going to be an obs... as I had only "negotiated" to have a pier on the front lawn of the house (the only place where I have any reasonable views of the skies"..but i did make sure that the pier surround would take a dome up to the size of a 2.7m Pulsar...

So it was a quick session on the CAD and asking for a favour from my local friendly laser cutting and fabrication shop to cut and weld the pier for me...

After a while i broached the subject of a an obs and designed a 12 sided one to be made out of UPVC ship lap. I finally got "approval" .

The dome timbers were designed on CAD and laser cut from 19mm exterior play as were the dome mounting rings...( I'll add the pics of the skeletal structure if I can find them)

I took a week off work to build the obs..

The initial design had essentially 2 segment removed for the viewing aperture and a zenith hole... after a while especially with offset OTA's on the 8" this was to restrictive and wouldn't allow for wide field piggy back tracked shots... It also meant dome tweaks every 30-40 mins depending where in the sky I was imaging

So I decide it was time for Radical surgery ... and designed the Slide of roof mods that can be seen in the first pic. I now have 60 degrees of clear aperture clear from Horizon to 120 degrees (zenith +30 degrees) and it makes life so much easier as I can now have over 2 hours between dome tweaks...

Finished the "sealing" over the last week.. I need a dry spell to add some sloping pieces in front of the removable panel and around the dome base to stop the water building up ... and need to seal the bottom of the obs walls where there is very slight seepage...

Once its properly dry I am going to clad the inside with ply and fill the gap with expanding polyurethane foam (for security) as it will make the walls much stronger...

Billy...

[MikeD]

Very nice job, enjoy.

Mike.

[rawhead]

That really does look the biz Billy

I have seen it in a previous post and as a result decided to paint mine white. Unfortunately this was overruled

The planning process has been quite fraught on my own build...

V important to keep wifey on board

Cheers

Jon

[Psychobilly]

Over the weekend I'll try and track down more Pictures and text detailing the whole build process and move the pictures into place in the post.. I thought it was worth putting in this sub forum as it seemed like the ideal place to post it and might give some people a few more ideas...

Billy...

[centroid]

Over the weekend I'll try and track down more Pictures and text detailign the whole build process and move the pictures into place in the post.. I thought it was worth putting in this sub forum as it seemed liek the ideal place to post it and might give some people a few more ideas...

Billy...

That's a great idea Billy, this sub-section will be an ideal place for anybody contemplating an obsy build, to see what others have done, and be able to find it 'posted' in one place.

I'll follow your lead, and 'post' some pictures and details here.

Dave

[Psychobilly]

After trawling through Backup DVD's I have finally found some of the original build pics and sketches so have posted them on my Picasa space

Peter...

[barkis]

'Tis a fine construction Peter, The roof seems a variation on a theme by Centroid, except his turret rotated on what was originally a roll off roof, whereas yours is modification to the Dome itself. Very effective too mate.

You ought to go into production, and supply this in kit form,

you should be well below the price of a SkyShed Pod.

Ron.