----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mauna Loa Solar Observatory Observer's Log ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sun Mar 29 00:13:12 GMT 2026 Year:26 Doy:087 Observer: lisapg Weather COMMENT BY lisapg: Sun Mar 29 00:13:54 GMT 2026 Weather: High cirrus and a bit windy. ___end___ ** KCOR PM mcotter ** : Sun Mar 29 00:18:44 GMT 2026 entry was edited Washed Kcor O1. The Kcor O1 when taken out showed excessive dust, debris, specks of First Contact and foreign particles spread all across the frame. lens and inner components. The lens frame was partially disassembled and the inner areas of the lens frame were thoroughly cleaned. One of the o-rings was taken out and cleaned of dust and First Contact residue. The o-ring was found to be hardened and it has lost some of it's compression; it is recommended that both o-rings be changed with new ones the next time the mechanism is taken apart. The lens was rinsed using ionized water four to six times on each side to rinse off and remove the dust and foreign particles before soap cleaning was attempted. A soap cleaning was done to each side of the lens four to six times before we were satisfied with the cleanliness of the O1. Total cleaning time was in excess of six hours. The O1 was re-installed into the instrument. ___end___ GENERAL BY lisapg: Sun Mar 29 00:24:08 GMT 2026 Cleaning, dusting, sweeping and vacuuming occurred up in the dome. KCor occulter was removed and stored safely and field lens was removed. Since KCor O1 was removed for cleaning, the inside/outside of Kcor was cleaned with a wipe, air and vacuum where applicable. A hepa hose was patched in a couple of places and they are currently switched off. ___end___ KCOR BY berkey: Sun Mar 29 00:28:17 GMT 2026 Lubricated optics box rails and exercised all the mechanisms. ___end___ ** KCOR PROBLEM REPORTED BY berkey ** : Sun Mar 29 00:32:46 GMT 2026 Closed loop HEPA fan (optical tube air circulation) was found to be inoperable. Fuse in the NEMA box has been blow. Quick test with the open loop power showed the fan would turn on but made aggressive noises and sounded like it barely turned. Close loop fan will be off until we can do more troubleshooting. Close loop fan seems to be operation nominally ___end___ KCOR COMMENT BY berkey: Sun Mar 29 00:37:16 GMT 2026 KCor data transfer tests were done today, via watch dog script that monitored for file closures in the data directory. Initially the code did a local gzip of the file before copying to Boulder but the script was later edited to just transfer the fts files. This seemed to work fairly well when the network was up but we saw multiple drop outs over the day causing failed transfers. I am going to work on a end of day script that creates the machine and l1/l2 logs after it attempts to catchup on the missing fits files. ___end___ ** KCOR PROBLEM REPORTED BY berkey ** : Sun Mar 29 00:39:54 GMT 2026 The windows upgrade on Kcor2 seems to be having an issue with the virus scanner. The installed version doesn't play well with the OS and many/most 32bit applications end up getting forced to run as background processes with no GUI's. Some work around were found but generally this bug makes most operations difficult. ___end___ ** GENERAL PROBLEM REPORTED BY berkey ** : Sun Mar 29 00:41:43 GMT 2026 Internet down More network troubleshooting today. Swapping the sfp for the firewall media convert has seem to improve things, I am not sure if I noticed a drop out after making this change. ___end___ Guider/spar COMMENT BY berkey: Sun Mar 29 00:46:02 GMT 2026 Guider was tested on sky. We found some small config changes relative to the Boulder version based on guider location and PID values. Sky conditions were not great with thin/moderate cirrus but the performance seemed to match past performance in these conditions. Beyond sky testing we ran the DEC into the End of travel sensor to observer that the amplifier properly disables motion in that direction once this sensor is triggered. ___end___ BY mcotter: Sun Mar 29 01:04:32 GMT 2026 We are getting close to being ready to observer. We just need. -Field lens cleaning -Couple more tweaks to the real time kcor transfer -Clear skies ___end___ Logger COMMENT BY mcotter: Sun Mar 29 01:05:48 GMT 2026 Log closed ONSITE STAFF: berkey, lisapg, mcotter ___end___