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SALT/PFIS Photographs South Africa Activities:
Delivery to SALT |
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30 September 2005:
The truck arrived at SALT and we started offloading. The door into the
SALT building was not large enough to accommodate PFIS inside its crate,
so the crate had to be dismantled first. Then the truck was backed through
the door. The dolly was lifted and then PFIS lifted onto the dolly.
PFIS is now in its new home. A visual inspection of the lenses shows no
obvious damage, so we are hopeful that everything survived transport
successfully.
29 September 2005:
A 12-meter air suspension flatbed truck was ordered for the transport
of PFIS to SALT. However, the flatbed was so high that we didn't have
the clearance with the crane to get it onto the truck. We had to order
a forklift to put it on. The forklift could only put the crate on with its
long side across the truck, so the crane that came on the truck with the
forklift was used to rotate the crate 90 degrees. Then the rest of the
equipment was loaded onto the truck. The truck headed out towards SALT,
but stopped partway there and delivered on 30 September 2005. So, PFIS
left Cape Town exactly 24 weeks after it arrived.
28 September 2005:
We turned off the instrument and starting warming up the detector on Monday.
On Tuesday we had to pack the spectrograph. A local company called Cape
Crating built the crate that PFIS would be housed in for the transport.
At the bottom of the crate we placed the steel ring on which the structure
was originally sent to us from Rutgers.
Getting PFIS into the crate required removing the temporary wall in the
lab, rolling out into the shop area and lifting the instrument with the
overhead crane. We had to attach the ballast to balance it while it was
hanging on the crane.
