RE: [APML] Leonid plans

[Jerry Lodriguss <jml@astropix.com>]

>
>In particular I really liked the suggestions to tape the lenses
>to infinity focus and their desired aperture, but Jerry, with
>your dozen cameras, many with motors and all with dew heaters,
>how do you provide power?  You must need a nearby substation,
>or a cold-fusion cell!


No, I've made a pact with the Satan to get power directly from him, he cut 
me quite a deal, he has some surplus heat that he gets from somewhere. <G>

Actually, that is something I have not thought about enough for this 
particular situation.  Thanks for bringing this up.

Let's see, the small Kendricks draw 0.4 amps, and the big one 1 amp I 
think. The ST-4 draws about 1 amp. The drive corrector draws 0.375 while 
tracking, and 0.65 when the motor is active, say .5 on avg.

So that's roughly 12 x .4 = 4.8 plus 1.0 for the 5 inch Kendrick = 5.8, 
lets round to 6.

ST-4 ------------- 1.0
Kendricks --------- 6.0
Drive Corrector ---- 0.5
______________________

Total ------------- 7.5 amp hours.

The camera motors all have their own batteries, so that's not a problem.  I 
have a 75 amp hour deep-cycle marine battery. That should last from 
midnight to dawn.

I used to run all of my equipment off the Jeep battery, of course not 12 
anti-dewers, just 3 and the ST-4 and the drive corrector for the Losmandy 
mount for a total of approx 3.5 - 4 amps.

Then one long, cold night for Comet Hyakutake I tried to leave the next 
morning and had a dead car battery.  In the woods. In the middle of 
nowhere.  I was lucky to get into a cell and called a good friend who drove 
out and jumped the battery and saved my butt, but I learned a lesson there. 
Don't suck your car battery dead!



>I just came back from a trip to AZ, squeezing in a night on Mt Graham.
>I would have had a full night of shooting, but my battery pooped out
>by midnight and my lenses fogged up.  Dew wins again.

Dew in Arizona? (I know, it's wet on top of the mountains, that's why they 
have trees up there and not in the desert... <G>)

In the days of my early trips to Arizona, I used to run my stuff of the 
rental car in the middle of the desert for nights on end. Of course I 
didn't need any dew heaters there.  Amazingly, all those years I didn't 
kill a car battery. And that was in the days before cell phones. Maybe the 
rental car batteries, never being more than a year old, were in a little 
better shape than my Jeep battery, which was several years old.

Good luck to you and clear skies.

Jerry



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