MDM Trouble Report for 2021 Nov 09

Telescope: 2.4m
Observer(s): John Thorstensen (Dartmouth)
Instrument: OSMOS

Problem(s) Encountered:
I had two problems:

1) The airbag system was not working at startup.  I called Eric 
and he had me wiggle the connector for Hardpoint 2 until
it was making contact, whereupon the system worked again.  
However, it failed again at 2 AM MST and I had to repeat the 
process.  It took a lot of wiggling before it worked.  At 
Eric's suggestion I reviewed the mirror support manual and 
it appears that, if it fails again and I can't get it to make 
contact, I can stay on the air by typing H2, which tells the 
system to ignore input from HP2 and use other information 
to adjust the air bags. 

2) Fairly early in the evening, with the telescope at 0h42m E and
+43 deg dec, the telescope jumped perhaps 15-20 arcsec east
about a half-dozen times in rapid succession -- within a few
minutes.  The star would jump out of the guide box and the
West paddle button brought it back.  The first jump came to 
my attention because the guider alarm started going off. For
that one I stopped the exposure, recentered the guide star, and 
restarted the guider without changing the guider at all. I then
checked the centering, and the telescope was dead-on the 
position before the jump.  This shows that the jump is 
mechanical, and not caused by something slipping in the guide 
optics. There were no further episodes of jumping for the 
rest of the night.

Not trouble as such, but the pointing seemed to be 
inconsistent by about 10 seconds of time in RA -- it would 
be fine for a while and then go out somewhat. 

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Submitted on 2021 Nov 10 [6:46:14]