RLKelm wrote:
<snip>
What caught my eye in your note was that you have your own rolling roof observatory.
I have been seriously thinking about trying to build one, somewhere, somehow. Did you have commercial plans or design your own? Could you give me any suggestions on where to start?
My 3¢ worth of advice: 1¢: Make sure the roof has some slope to it. Much less chance of leaking that way and you don't have to worry quite as much about snow load. 2¢: Make the roof beefy or (and) have a way to tie it down when closed (ask Bruce Grim about his first roll off roof at Stansbury and how the wind put it through one of this home's windows). 3¢: Steel wheels with V grooves running on angle iron track are the best, such as the ones that we have at SPOC and now on my personal observatory. Pictures of the SLAS roofs at http://slas.ws/spoc2pics.htm and a closeup of the wheels at http://slas.ws/profiles/patrickw/PATRICKW186.JPG . Patrick