MDM Trouble Report for 2008 Dec 20

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): M. Kilic (OSU/CfA)
Instrument: Direct Echelle

Problem(s) Encountered:
I put this info in the night report as well:

The telescope start button would not stay on at the beginning.
Even though I made sure that the platform was down, the telescope
would not start. Bob told me to disable the switch for detecting
the platform position. After I did that, the start button worked.

I lost pointing twice at the beginning. Everytime I moved to a
new object, I would lose pointing. In one case, I wanted to
move to an object 1 hr east of the meridian, but the telescope
ended up going >4 hrs east of the meridian, I'm not sure why.
I lost a total of 40 minutes for fixing the pointing (twice).
In order to not to lose pointing again, I slewed to new targets
using the hand paddle and then used the TCS Go command to
accurately center on targets.

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Submitted on 2008 Dec 21 [7:24:30]