Yes, the start time is 4am Pacific / 7am Eastern
- I’m heading to my remotely operable astronomical observatory ( lovingly called – AstroShed )
- I have some parts to swap out to help the setup perform better (Specifics below)
NOTE: The stream is only as reliable as my AT&T Cellular internet.
- Unlike live drive’s with the coach, I won’t have 4 high gain antennas and multiple carriers in aggregate.
- Thus, the likelihood of lost signal is much higher.
- Hope you stick around anyway to keep me company!
Travel Vehicle:
2017 Tesla Model X P100D
w/ Full-Self Driving
~285 mile range on a full charge
Travel Details:
Start: 4am Pacific/7am Eastern at Las Vegas, NV
Travel Time: About 11 hrs (with charge stops)
Charge Time: About 1.5 hrs required (adding a big top up at the end for future convenience)
End: 4pm to 5pm Pacific/7pm to 8pm Eastern at Rodeo, NM
Shed Update Specifics:
- Primary Objective: Swapping my Off-Axis Guider… to an On-Axis Guider
- Due to the design of the ONAG-XM, I’ll be able to perform continuous auto-focus, saving potentially hours of time per night
- The ONAG also only sends near infra-red light to the guide camera
- Since near-IR is much less impacted by atmospheric conditions, my guiding should be more precise
- Swapping G3 Bullet cameras to G4 Bullet cameras on the outside
- The G4 line is higher resolution and supports native object identification ( People / Vehicles )
- Installing foam tile on the floor of the AstroShed
- In case something (or someone) falls, this will make the landing less likely to sustain damage to said thing/person.
- Swapping my Roof / South-Flap controllers to my shiny new PCBs
- no real functional benefit, but it will be a “cleaner” Installing
- Swapping a ‘too short’ HDMI cable with a longer one to prevent trip hazards
Update – 2021-04-20
Trip complete, Michael made it back home safely – if not a bit frazzled from the 1200 miles of round-trip travel.
