Dwight, I like that counterweighted roof setup. I've never seen anything like that. It gives you great low angle viewing! The roof on my primary observatory is motorized so it tracks on rails but the room has 8' ceilings and requires a Pier 2 to lift the OTA. This works ok but I would much rather have a setup like yours. It does allow me to roll the roof back and remotely operate the scope from Houston. It's set up with OAK control hardware so if a storm sneaks up, the skycam senses the weather, closes the roof and shuts things down until the weather passes unless you run into daylight. I've got one of the original AP 6" that I use on a portable mount. I also have a 10" f4.5 that I ground polished and figured when I was a kid. I built an alt-az mount for it and still use it on occasion on the deck while running the other gear.
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The other observatory with the dome is located on a regional hill and makes the most of the incredible Bortle 1 skies in our area. The dome isn't motorized so during the course of the night you have to manually push the dome. It's a 10' fiberglass dome and doesn't like to be pushed. I have a 12" RC at that location and eyepiece astronomy is my favorite. It also has an AP 1200 mount but it's not goto like yours. That hasn't been a problem for me because I'm on the eyepiece and not the camera.
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If the last picture is your current setup in ABQ, you aren't hurting too bad. LOL Very nice equipment and I especially like the AP 1200.
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I didn't totally dodge the bullet in the service. I enlisted in the Navy Seabees and went to boot camp at Great Lakes. I got on the plane in late November in Baton Rouge wearing a long sleave shirt at 80 degrees. I wore a long sleeve shirt because I was told it might be colder up north. I got off the plane in Chicago and determined I had made a tactical error. When I left the building and found a cab to take me to the Great Lakes Naval facility, I determined just how large a tactical error I had made. The next 2 1/2 months were not meant for people much less a coonass from south Louisiana. I'm not sure what the ambient temp was that winter but I do know the wind chill in 40mph winds is brutal. On top of that Vietnam caused an overload with the barracks and we spent the 1st month in the wooden WW2 barracks that had very little steam radiator heat and no running water. We had to march to the chow hall and showers daily. The military was great with the Seabees but the Navy boot camp, not so much.??
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Tom
N5AMA
