MDM Trouble Report for 2006 Jun 8

Telescope: 1.3m
Observer(s): G. Tiede, C. Bunner (Bowling Green State University)
Instrument: TIFKAM

Problem(s) Encountered:
Not having any clue what the focus was for TIFKAM,
(in conjunction with the pointing problems) focusing used
up about an hour of time at the beginning of the night.
Typical focus settings should be listed somewhere.

Pointing was terrible.  After doing a tilt zeroing at 
zenith and zeroing on a bright star the following slew 
resulted in the target falling outside of TIFKAM's
field of view.  We tried this procedure multiple times
with slews to targets of ~2 to 20 degrees and every time
the target fell outside or on the edge of TIFKAM's field
of view, and not in a repeatable fashion.  Is it possible
that the telescope balance wasn't set correctly when
TIFKAM was installed today?

Our program is going to require hundreds of dither
offsets per night.  When I tried to use 'offset' or any 
of the 'north', 'south', 'east', or 'west' commands, Prospero 
did not do the offsets but instead replied that offseting 
has not been implimented on the 1.3m.  Further, as far as 
I could determine, there is no way to do an offset from the 
TCS.  Is this correct?  Producing regular offsets with the 
paddle is impossible, and without the ability to do regular
offsetting I'm not sure how to proceed with our program.

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Submitted on 2006 Jun 9 [2:14:25]