telescope

Did you get to work on this beast?

Bob

When its done, they are just goinf to point it north as another one of these:

-- Paul Hovnanian mailto: snipped-for-privacy@Hovnanian.com

------------------------------------------------------------------ Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.

--
Congratulations on dropping back in! :-)

Only a very minor role. They have installed about 60 RTDs in various parts of the structure to measure temperature, to adjust for thermal growth. We're going to supply the data acquisition stuff for the RTDs. They need about 0.1 C longterm accuracy.

This is an impressive dish. It works to 100 GHz and has an adaptive surface to keep a near-perfect shape. One of the antennas is a

64-pixel imager, sort of like a real optical telescope. I'd never heard of a radio telescope that had more than a simple antenna at the prime focus.

Great pics on the web site.

John

How big?

John

Cool--that's some crystal set they've got there: 80-275 GHz! MM waves can tell you a lot of things about the interstellar medium, because that's where the thermal emission of cold interstellar objects peaks.

I had an undergraduate research assistantship back in 1980-81, doing some simulations for millimeter-wave (110-115 GHz) imaging of carbon monoxide in interstellar giant molecular clouds. My professor, Bill Shuter, had a mm-wave telescope of about 5m diameter, with a filter-bank signal processor and cooled parametric amplifier front end. They never let me touch any of the neat electronics. :(

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Even more impressive is that beanpole crane. Seems held down just by 4 bolts on a 6' square, yet manages to soar upwards forever. There's no way it should stay up, never mind do any actual work.

I'll keep that in mind, but we avoid serious machining, because it's too expensive. We prefer punched/folded sheet metal and laser-cut plastic stuff.

We just decided to do a new line of small-box (7x5x2.25 inches) products and looked over the usual suppliers of enclosures... Hammond, Bud, Buckeye, Rose, like that. Everything was too expensive or not quite right mechanically, or had grounding/thermal problems, so we designed our own. Turns out you can generally have a sheet-metal shop run off a batch of custom enclosures cheaper than you can buy+modify the standard stuff.

I'll post some pics of our design. A bunch of people had good ideas, so it's cheap, very versatile, and should look good.

Buckeye does have one interesting process. They nc machine flat pieces of plastic and then heat-bend them into very clever interlocking snap-together shapes, with all the device and mounting holes, standoffs, and lettering done at once. They can even do copperclad plastic for intenal shielding.

John

I can't imagine how they got all this gear up onto a 15,000 foot mountain peak in rural Mexico. One of the guys told us how, for the first few hours, people get merely exhausted, and then the serious altitude problems start to kick in.

John

According to the accompanying book, they built a 20 km access road up the mountain.

--
John

Hey, John, I'm coming down to Burlingame and Foster City across the Bay Bridge a lot of times this next few months. I'm what Jim T. calls an extreme leftist weenie in that I'm a statewide faculty union officer coming down for what Jim certainly believes are plots against the establishment.

Be that as it may, I'd really like to drop in and say "hi". What are your offical "visiting hours" and can I bring a bottle of anything decent to make the time go by pleasantly? Or a chunk of any animal milk fat that has been rendered and processed?

We've got a bit of Nevada County grape that you've probably never sampled before that isn't all that shabby. I'd be honored to bring along a bottle of the best we produce. Red or white, your choice. Or the cheese if you wish but that won't be from this part of the world.

Jim

--
"If you think you can, or think you can\'t, you\'re right."
        --Henry Ford



"John Larkin"  wrote in message 
news:di1go3duocomsg8aoh8ikf33q1ebkn742q@4ax.com...
>
> http://www.lmtgtm.org/images.html
>
> John
>

Plot, plot, plot away. Here in AZ we're systematically doing away with unions. Multiple suits in Federal courts against them for creating fake non-profit corporations that spread falsehoods about anyone they're trying to unionize.

[snip]

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

I'm mildly anti-union for what I think are valid reasons, not to mention that I'm too irritable and too disorganized to join

*anything*. The co-founder of my company was once an international organizer for the Teamsters.

Well, don't show up before 9:45, because I probably won't be there. Around noon is good, because I could take you to Zuni for lunch.

We like crispy whites or light reds, pinots or merlots or whatever. Those "big" tannic zins and stuff are too much for us. Nothing fancy, just stuff that's easy to drink.

But your real proplem will be to find the place. The intersection is a nightmare, and most people miss it the first try. Email me and I'll send you the directions, a mere 3 megabyte PDF file.

John

I've found Google maps to be very helpfull for these kind of problems.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

Horsesmoke and gunshit. You don't need falsehoods to organize. You only have to find underpaid workers who aren't afraid to stand up and do something about it. Slave labor in China to manufacture and slave labor in the USA to stock and sell it and you've got one hell of a profit for the corporate shareholders.

Jim

I can't say I blame you. I'm not that far on the other side of the "pro" myself. However, I can't be a part of an organization without this insane drive to run the engine.

Nevada City Winery makes a delicious pink that I always enjoy. Nothing pretentious; just a good sippin' wine.

No problem. I'll set the GPS to find it for me.

Jim

The why are they doing it?

Platitudes, platitudes. Why can't Demoncrats deal in FACT?

The union organizers are attacking a small, family-owned, local-Arizona chain, Basha's.

Basha's pays more than union scale plus has health benefits.

The union just wants a piece of the action.

Did you know that the Democrats in Congress this past year tried to pass a bill doing away with the secret ballot in union elections.

Try and deny that ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

All unions do is shuffle wealth from place to place. They create none, at best, and more often destroy it. Classicly, in the US, they increased the earnings of members at the expense of non-members. Lately, they export working-class jobs to other countries.

The bumper sticker says that organized labor brought us the weekend. In actuality, it was the engineers. Henry Ford tripled the wages of his workers, and pissed off a lot of other business owners, *before* Ford was unionized. So look at Ford today.

John

Dunno. I can't claim every union in the country has perfectly clean skirts, only the one I'm involved with.

Have you ever known an engineer worthy of the name that has a hell of a time in politics because (s)he can't deal in anything BUT fact. I'd probably still be in public office if I hadn't answered every question asked of me with what I saw as the facts.

Like I said, I can only speak for my organization and why we do what we do. I suspect there is more of the tale than you are willing to tell. IF the working conditions are so good, the workers would have no reason to pay union dues.

I neither assert nor deny it. I would never have anything to do ... nay I would actively work against ... both legislation such as this or an organization that took advantage of it. Who authored the legislation?

Jim