Having set the telescope up at Fairborn Observatory in June, 2000, we began a series of acceptance and development tests on it in July. The work planned for the third trip, scheduled for October, 2000, had to do with finishing some mechanical work (related to the control buildings and minor details on the telescope) and continuing to develop the telescope control system. Roy Young of Huntsville, Alabama, who has been helping us arrange tests of the telescope optics, joined us for the last three days of this session. Although we did most of the work we had intended, this work session was dogged by rainy weather.

The work planned falls into four categories as follows:

1. MECHANICAL ADJUSTMENTS and augmentation of the telescope structure.
1. Finish preparing the control building for receiving electronics and for use in future acceptance/development tests. (Sierrita Mining finished modifying the building before this month's work session. We ran a temporary power cable into it and got an ethernet connection ready to run in next month. We also straightened up the telescope enclosure and moved most of the equipment lying around it into the control building and spectrograph enclosure.)
2. Get furniture for the control building--in place before the next work session. (Lou Boyd bought the furniture and we have now placed all of it into the control building.)
3. Seal up the base of the telescope to prepare it for the air-sucking system. Put the base skirt on the telescope. (We did all these tasks. However, the base skirt will require an access port and having its lower edge cut off in the next month or so.
4. Finish designing the air-sucking system by laying out the duct work to take the air out of the building. (We designed this duct work and the electrical connection for the fan.)
5. Get building for storing shipping crates/pallets for the mirror, top end, and fork and for storing spare parts. (We arranged to get this building through a contract with Sierrita Mining. The building should be in place by the middle of November.)
6. Hook up the pump in the secondary oil return system so that the oil doesn't have to be returned by hand. (We hooked up this system and found that the pump we intended to use was not strong enough.)
7. Paint rusting metal, specifically the tilt shocks (which started rusting while NASA refused us permission to move the telescope) and the railings outside the control building. (We did this with the help of Roy Young, who came out to help with the work.)
8. Decide on whether and how to paint the control building. (Sierrita painted the parts that needed painting before we got there.)
9. Put up a sign on the building identifying the telescope as belonging to TSU. (Busby is arranging to get the sign.)
10. Get motorized replacement for the crane in the roof of the main enclosure? (We decided not to do this because of the expense and likely infrequent use of the crane.)
2. ELECTRICAL WIRING.
1. Transfer the executive computer to the control building and hook it up to the internet. (Boyd got the network connection to the rest of Fairborn Observatory set up, but we did not transfer the control computer to the other building as planned.
2. Add field camera to side of telescope (appx 5-deg field) to be consistent with other telescopes at Fairborn Observatory. (We did this.
3. Hook up an accurate thermometer to the computer in the telescope. (Williamson hooked the new thermometer into the control system, wrote it into the telescope control system, but has brought it back to Nashville for calibration.)
4. Rewire the oil pumps for 220 volts and hook into the circuits protected by the UPS. (Boyd has wired in the 220V connection. We deferred rewiring the pumps because of the nasty weather.)
5. Finish armoring the wires exposed to mice. (We finished this job.)
6. Replace the control cable to the instrument head, since the existing cable has unnecessary connections for motors for the axial hard points. (We decided to rebuild the wiring harness for all the stepper motors, measured the cables required for it, and will make it in Nashville before our next work session in Arizona.)
3. Work on MIRRORS.
1. Recolimate the telescope by using comatic images in the acquisition camera at prime focus. (We did this the first night we were able to observe anything appreciable. The axis seems to be about 0.5 arcmin from the center of the field of the centered CCD camera in the horizontal direction (along azimuth) and 0.75 arcmin in tilt.)
2. Verify mirror supports by observing faint stars at many zenith distances and measuring their profiles. (We made observations of two stars inside and outside of focus to look for optical problems. Both stars showed similar images, which indicated a slight amount of uncompensated spherical aberration. A focus image of a faint star shows the rough profile of the images, and a picture of the Orion nebula shows the scale of the acquisition camera at prime focus.
3. Adjust the counterweights so they are working. (We did this and put on the cover plates over the lateral support levers.
4. Work on the DRIVES and CONTROL SYSTEM.
1. Implement the mount model and verify it by acquiring and tracking stars. (We made a new mount model after recolimating the primary mirror and centering the CCD camera, by observing stars all over the sky on the only clear night available, and we applied this mount model on our last night by observing mostly stars in the southern half of the sky. Pointing was about 20 arcsec with the corrections, not as good as expected but adequate to find stars with the Cassegrain system.)
2. Measure angular positions of the limit switches for tilt; measure profile of western horizon blocked by the hill; and incorporate these limits into the control system. (We did all these little jobs and verified them by running the telescope.)