Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 22:40:45 -0700
From: Russell E Owen
Subject: success...
We're still doing pointing modelling, but as of 22:30 (APO time) the
pointing modelling is going extremely well. We got a first draft
pointing model with 4 terms that seems to work pretty well (though
we've not yet tested it over all the sky), certainly well enough to
allow us to get a decent first draft instrument block and possibly
well enough to get a star onto the engineering camera over much of
the sky.
As I write this, Dan is running our first automated pointing model,
and it successfully found the first star.
We had no amplifier dropouts (except one intentionally generated
one), no runaways, no unexpectedly large errors between TCC and MCP,
and when the amplifier did drop out, AXIS INIT brought it back again!
There are some remaining servo issues to address. See the punch list
for details. But based on operations to this point, the remaining
problems can be worked around in such a way as to give very reliable
operation.
Congratulations to Charlie Briegel and thanks for staying up so late
while we made sure things were working. Thanks also to Jim Gunn for
staying up late to advise.
-- Russell