Obsy Build Has Started!

[Budgie1]

53 minutes ago, M40 said:

A great build and some fantastic views 👌 Quick question for you though, nothing whatsoever to do with obs, but we are staying near Aberfeldy in about a month or so's time, what do you use to "smidge up" as I do tend to be a mosquito magnet and I fully intend to get out weather permitting to enjoy the bortle 2.

For the uninitiated, midges are different from mosquitoes, you may get a few mosquitoes around you but you'll get thousands of midgies, see video below!

I use "Smidge". I was out until late last night putting the roof panels & felt on the Obsy and the midgies were really bad towards 10pm. Even though I'd Smidged up, they were still landing on me but weren't biting, at one point I looked at my hand and it was covered in them, bit like in the video.

Smidge works better than anything else I've tried, it's not cheap, but it works. 👍

 

[Skipper Billy]

On 15/08/2022 at 22:27, Budgie1 said:

Roof boards and felt is next, when the rain stops!

I can highly recomend EPDM as an alternative to felt. I wee bit more expensive but much easier to apply and lasts years and years.....

https://www.rubber4roofs.co.uk/shop/epdm-rubber-roofing

 

[Skipper Billy]

2 hours ago, M40 said:

A great build and some fantastic views 👌 Quick question for you though, nothing whatsoever to do with obs, but we are staying near Aberfeldy in about a month or so's time, what do you use to "smidge up" as I do tend to be a mosquito magnet and I fully intend to get out weather permitting to enjoy the bortle 2.

https://shop.smidgeup.com/products/smidge

Almost everywhere in Scotland sells it!

 

[Budgie1]

1 hour ago, Skipper Billy said:

I can highly recomend EPDM as an alternative to felt. I wee bit more expensive but much easier to apply and lasts years and years.....

https://www.rubber4roofs.co.uk/shop/epdm-rubber-roofing

 

I did have a look at EPDM, David, but the shed came with a roll of felt so I decided to use that first and then go with EPDM when it gives out.

The felt is now on the roof, I finished at about 10:15 last night so it's at least watertight before any more showers come through.

[Budgie1]

Update:

As you may have see in my earlier posts, I worked into the late evening yesterday to get the roof boards in place and the felt fitted. Today I went around and tidied up what I missed in the dark & working by headtorch last night.

Then I painted and fitted the battens to the gable ends of the roof, painted & fitted the door surrounds (still need to cut the door and fit it) then fitted the four roof clamps.

On my way home yesterday I managed to get 10 x 1.8m lengths of feather board, which will nicely cover & weather proof the gap between the roof & walls, also allowing me to hinge the rear one so it will lift when rolling the roof. These are in the middle of painting at the moment.

I was going to work on this evening but the midges are horrendous again this evening, it fine if there's a bit of wind but it's calm here and I could feel them bouncing off my face when I was trying to paint the feather boards and they were getting stuck in the paint. So I gave up, finished the painting in my other shed and called it a night.

 

[Budgie1]

I haven't made much progress this week, mainly due to work & rain, but I did get some jobs completed today.

First off was to correct something I noticed I got wrong when I put the wheels on the roof frame. For some reason, on three of the wheels the axle bolt had the nut facing the upright part of aluminium runners and this was catching occasionally.

So I decided to lift the roof and put the axle bolt in from the other side, so the hex head was closest to the aluminium and wouldn't catch.  That roof is heavy now the roof panels and felt are on it, but job done and something I won't have to worry about.

Once that was done, I cut the door to size and got it mounted, I've not decided on security for the obsy yet, so the padlock clasp is on there at the moment to keep the door shut.  

I then cut the feather board to size for the shed sides, these were painted a couple of days ago, so I just painted the cut edge & fitted them in place. Hopefully theses will keep the weather out.

I also cut the front feather boards and did the cut-outs for the top of the door and the runners. I then painted the back & edges before fitting them in place and giving them one coat of paint. These will get another couple of coats of paint this coming week and I have 50mm long garage door brush strip coming to put behind the boards to clean the runners and act as a draught excluder.

Spot the freshly painted boards! 👇😀

Finally today, I cut the beads which cover the centre of the wall panels to length and started painting those. Then it'll be the corner beading to cut, paint & fit and that'll be then main part of the shed just about completed. Oh yah, I've still go the rear feather board flap to make as well, once I decide on the hinges I'm going to use.

Then I can move on to the decking. Oh, didn't I mention the decking? A small request from my wife to put decking in front of the obsy as somewhere to sit, as it's in full Sun in the Summer. Well, she did agree to have the Obsy on the garden and she painted it for me, so it's the least I can do.

Edited August 21, 2022 by Budgie1

[M40]

10 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

A small request from my wife to put decking in front of the obsy as somewhere to sit, as it's in full Sun in the Summer.

Hmmm 🤔 I wonder if the obsy roof will make a nice sun shade 😜 A great build, thanks for sharing and thanks for the info about "Smidge" 

[maw lod qan]

Your build is coming along very nice.

Of course put the deck for the wife!

Just negotiate the rent for using the deck up front.

If not, it will quickly go from a "Man Cave/Observatory " to a "Sheshed" and it will be you paying timeshare costs!

😁

[Budgie1]

Another busy week at work but I managed to grab a day off to get a long bank holiday weekend.

It was dry today so I got on with fitting some items which arrived in the post during the week. 

First off was another set of wheels for the roof. Looking at the fully assembled roof and feeling the weight that's in it now, I decided to air on the side of caution and add some more wheels. As the wheels I originally got were only £13.99 for four, I just got another set and fitted four to each side. It does run much easier now and I'm more happy with it.

The second job was fitting some handles to assist with opening & closing the roof. These are sprung and fold flat when not being used.

Then I took the feather board off the front of the obsy so I could give it another coat of paint and also fit the draft-excluder/runner brushes. These seem to work quite well and as I've got 1.5m of the stuff, it should last a while.

Lastly today, I fitted the flooring. This is 3mm thick interlocking workshop flooring I got from Homebase and I used 2 packs of 6 tiles to cover the shed floor. It covers the gaps in the floorboards, insulates and will hopefully save any astro kit I may drop.

So, all that's really left to do is finish painting & fit the battens for the corners and the wall joints, make the feather board hinged flap for the rear of the roof and fit the security. Then build a small desk for the laptop in one corner and put a dew cover over it, build the decking, line the inside of the shed.......................... So, not much left, but at least I can start using it now.

 

[M40]

Don't forget the lady wife's patio, covered walkway, lounger, smidge netting, drink cooler...... have I missed anything?    

[Budgie1]

Not much has happened with the actual build this week but my wife has completed a blind for the inside of the windows and the support posts have grown leaves!

I did get a couple of evenings with clear skies this week and put the HEQ5 and Evostar 100ED DS Pro onto the pier for the first time. This was mainly to make sure the roof cleared the scope and it does, just!

I did have to rotate the focuser so the EAF cleared roof and didn't hit the pier when imaging.

The metal plates I got for the discs are now in place and work well. The one which holds the mount securing bolt isn't fixed to the underside of the disc, so I can remove it if needs be. The mount is solid on there now and I'm really pleased with the pier.

I still need to make something permanent for the laptop, but I've got a fold-up table in there at the moment and a small seat, which work fine as a temporary measure. Power is supplied using an extension lead run from the house and the 12v 10amp PSU sits under the mount, again, this will be fitted more permanently later.

Tuesday night was looking good for a clear night so that's when I setup the mount & scope, as it turned out, it wasn't that successful because it clouded over quite quickly and I only managed to get the mount polar aligned with SharpCap and saved the Park position for the mount in EQMod.

Last night (Thursday) is was looking good, so I got out there just after 9pm and connected the laptop & power. I then used APT's new Polar Alignment tool to find turn the AP using the main camera, after getting the focus right.

I then setup on NGC6914 in Cygnus as the first light target, also as a test for the L-eNhance filter I acquired from a fellow SGL member recently. I managed 38x 240s images before the cloud rolled in but only used 22 of them due to high cloud on some of them. This also included an meridian flip, which I let APT do on it's own and it went without any issues, although I was poised over the STOP button!  

So here's my first light from the Obsy and for this season, 1h 28m of NGC6914 stacked & processed in PI.

 

 

Edited September 2, 2022 by Budgie1

[Daf1983]

1 hour ago, Budgie1 said:

Not much has happened with the actual build this week but my wife has completed a blind for the inside of the windows and the support posts have grown leaves!

I did get a couple of evenings with clear skies this week and put the HEQ5 and Evostar 100ED DS Pro onto the pier for the first time. This was mainly to make sure the roof cleared the scope and it does, just!

I did have to rotate the focuser so the EAF cleared roof and didn't hit the pier when imaging.

The metal plates I got for the discs are now in place and work well. The one which holds the mount securing bolt isn't fixed to the underside of the disc, so I can remove it if needs be. The mount is solid on there now and I'm really pleased with the pier.

I still need to make something permanent for the laptop, but I've got a fold-up table in there at the moment and a small seat, which work fine as a temporary measure. Power is supplied using an extension lead run from the house and the 12v 10amp PSU sits under the mount, again, this will be fitted more permanently later.

Tuesday night was looking good for a clear night so that's when I setup the mount & scope, as it turned out, it wasn't that successful because it clouded over quite quickly and I only managed to get the mount polar aligned with SharpCap and saved the Park position for the mount in EQMod.

Last night (Thursday) is was looking good, so I got out there just after 9pm and connected the laptop & power. I then used APT's new Polar Alignment tool to find turn the AP using the main camera, after getting the focus right.

I then setup on NGC6914 in Cygnus as the first light target, also as a test for the L-eNhance filter I acquired from a fellow SGL member recently. I managed 38x 240s images before the cloud rolled in but only used 22 of them due to high cloud on some of them. This also included an meridian flip, which I let APT do on it's own and it went without any issues, although I was poised over the STOP button!  

So here's my first light from the Obsy and for this season, 1h 28m of NGC6914 stacked & processed in PI.

 

 

Looks like the l-enhance is working nicely! Great obsy build, I'm not at all jealous😬

[Budgie1]

6 minutes ago, Daf1983 said:

Looks like the l-enhance is working nicely! Great obsy build, I'm not at all jealous😬

I thought it would be rude not to try it out, Dafydd.  

It's a shame I couldn't have used more of the subs but it was obvious the high cloud had reduced the details, so it wasn't worth trying them. I'm please with the L-eNhance though, not quite as aggressive as the Askar or L-eXtreme and I'll try to get more on this target if I can.

[Alan White]

Nice build, good to see folks getting full time set ups.

Just being ready is worth its weight in gold.
My set up is a pier and mount out in the open, just pop the scope on,
for visual that’s really good.

[Budgie1]

3 hours ago, Alan White said:

Nice build, good to see folks getting full time set ups.

Just being ready is worth its weight in gold.
My set up is a pier and mount out in the open, just pop the scope on,
for visual that’s really good.

Thanks Alan,

It used to take me about half an hour to carry the mount, tripod, scope, laptop, power & USB cables through the house and setup in the garden. Even for the first time the other night, I connected the mount, scope & cameras during the daytime and all I had to do was run the power across the garden and connect the USB3 cable to the laptop. Setup time, about 5 minutes.

[Budgie1]

I've not updated this thread for a while, mainly because not much has happened. I've been too busy using it for imaging and getting used to the joys of having a permanent setup! I did a wee check on my setup times and from deciding it was a good night for imaging to starting the first exposure took 15 minutes the other night.  

I did make a desk for the laptop out of an old piece of kitchen worktop I had in the shed. That works well and I've used a laptop dew shelter I made a couple of years ago as protection. Because I don't have electrics installed yet (if I ever bother), I've fitted a 3-gang extension to the wall which I connect the laptop and main scope PSU too and I've run a 5m USB3 cable from the Pegasus Pocket Power Box Advance to the laptop. This means I just run an extension lead from the house into the obsy.

This afternoon I had some spare time so I got on with building the decking for the front of the Obsy. If you remember, this was part of the deal with my wife for putting the shed where it is.

Anyway, it went a lot faster than I thought it would and I got the whole thing completed in a couple of hours, I think it finishes it off nicely. I do need to get some anti-slip tread for the decking boards before winter, otherwise I'll likely fly in through the door when it gets icy!  

I still haven't made the weather flap for the rear of the roof and there's a few other small parts to complete, but it's just about there now.

[Graeme]

On 14/09/2022 at 20:56, Budgie1 said:

.....the joys of having a permanent setup! I did a wee check on my setup times and from deciding it was a good night for imaging to starting the first exposure took 15 minutes the other night.  

 

Well that's incentive enough to start an observatory build!

This has been a great thread to follow. 

Thanks

Regards

Graeme

[tim r]

Hi just on with mine where did you get the roof clamps thanks tim

[Budgie1]

17 minutes ago, tim r said:

Hi just on with mine where did you get the roof clamps thanks tim

Hi Tim,

I got the roof clamps off Amazon. They're robust and adjustable, I went for the large ones because of the length I needed.

[Budgie1]

51 minutes ago, Graeme said:

 

Well that's incentive enough to start an observatory build!

This has been a great thread to follow. 

Thanks

Regards

Graeme

It really is just so much easier than lugging all the kit through the house to set up in the back garden, Graeme.

All I have to do now is plug in the power (I haven't plumbed in power for the shed yet) and connect my laptop to the USB cable from the mount. Then flick the switch on the mount and fire up APT, PHD2 & CDC on the laptop. Once the camera has cooled I can start imaging.

[MarcuSmythe]

Nice that. So my next project will be an observatory! Thanks for sharing.

[Budgie1]

A wee update of the latest improvements.

Firstly, I finally got the corner battens fitted (but not painted yet). I had to put them on for protection, because we've had a bit of rain during October, as I type it's sitting at 277mm to be exact. 

This identified a slight flaw in my construction methods in that, on the windward side of the shed, the rain was running into the shed along the aluminium runner and then running off the aluminium runner between the wall and the runner bearer, causing a puddle on the floor of the shed. I realised the brush draft excluders I fitted to the roof didn't work and needed something else, and the water needed to be guided to the outside of the shed.

So, to solve the water ingress, I used some of the damp proofing left over from building the footings and tucked it under the aluminium runner, then folded it over the top of the outside wall. This way, any rain which runs off the aluminium just runs to the outside of the shed, as the damp proofing does slope that way. This fix has worked nicely and I haven't seen any water inside the shed since I fitted it, and we've had some thumping showers this week.

The second change was to the corners of the roof and replacing the draft excluder brushes over the runners. For this I used some neoprene I cut off a pair of old welly boots. I cut this to be a snug fit over the aluminium runners and secured them in place on both front corners by tucking them under the feather boards. This has sealed the corners nicely and they also do a nice job of stopping the rain running up the runner, with the added bonus of cleaning the runners when you open or close the roof.  

I also have a solar powered twin fan to fit to the Northeast gable end for extracting the hot air in the Summer. This is something to look at over the weekend as I also need to get some sort of cowl to weather & bug proof the fans.

I've still got shelving to go in there, so I can get the flight boxes for both Evostars out of the house. So more on these later.  

 

[saac]

@Budgie1  I had similar issue with mine, rain tracking along the exposed metal runners and finding its way through the holes used to screw the runners to the frame.  Quickly sorted with some frame sealant to each screw hole and a slight gradient on the runner to sop water running into the covered part of the obsy.  You will most certainly have noticed a massive improvement and use of your rig now you have it all under a permanent obsy  

Jim

[Budgie1]

9 minutes ago, saac said:

@Budgie1  I had similar issue with mine, rain tracking along the exposed metal runners and finding its way through the holes used to screw the runners to the frame.  Quickly sorted with some frame sealant to each screw hole and a slight gradient on the runner to sop water running into the covered part of the obsy.  You will most certainly have noticed a massive improvement and use of your rig now you have it all under a permanent obsy  

Jim

Most of my problem is with wind-driven rain being forced along the runners. A slight gradient would have been a good idea but no, I went for dead plumb when I built it. If the ingress starts again then I my jack the rear of the runners a bit, but I'll leave it as is for now.

Yes, Jim, a massive improvement. It quick to get imaging, my PA is much more accurate, which has resulted in better guiding as well. Now all I need is some clear nights so I can use it a bit more. October has been a right wash-out, with only one day when my weather station hasn't recorded any rain! Still, the clocks go back tomorrow so early evening imaging is near!

[Budgie1]

This is sort of a final/New Year update because most of the fettling has been done and now it's just the odd tweak that I'm doing.

I'd been threatening for months to get the hinged weather boards on the rear wall of the roof and I finally got around to this in November. These stop any driving wind or rain from entering the obsy, while still allowing the rear of the roof to clear the wall, so here's the weather boards in the closed & open positions.

With the expansion of the wood during the winter months, I was getting issues with the rear of the roof catching on the aluminium runners, so I raised the roof another 10mm. This allows enough clearance over the runners, back wall and the scope when it's in the Park position.

For safety on cold frosty nights, I've installed some anti-slip decking strips in front of the door. These work really well and I have no slips during the ice & snow in December.

I think that's about it. I've decided not to install mains power into the obsy, the current extension lead from the house is working well and saves the expense of getting a Sparky to install it. I've been using it, when the skies are clear, and currently have the SkyWatcher 80ED DS Pro on the mount with my newly acquired Atik 428EX & filter wheel, my first exploration into Mono imaging.

The obsy is a great asset when it comes to setup times and I'm not so worried if I only get an hour or two of imaging in an evening because I haven't spent 3/4 of an hour setting up. I hope this has been a useful and interesting thread and I hope it helps others in the future. Finally, here's the obsy in use today and thanks for reading the thread.