Uploaded June 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Welcome to the 3rd, and final video in the PRIME telescope dome series. As you saw last time, after lots of blood, sweat and tears, we eventually managed to assemble this huge dome! When our initial plans of sourcing a crane from one of the nearby wind-farm projects fell through, another week passed, during which a 40-ton crane had to be hired from Cape Town. This video features the eventual dome lift.
As you saw in my previous video where the wind ripped our dome in three, wind is an equally important consideration for the dome lift. The prediction for the next week Thursday and Friday looked good, so it was arranged that the crane will travel up to Sutherland on Wednesday, 16 June 2021 and do the dome lift first thing on Thursday morning. Since we still had a few tasks to do to be ready for the dome lift, we came up early and spent Wednesday finishing it all. However, by the end of the day, there was still no sign of the crane! Later that evening we got a message that they got held up with a job and is expected to get to site at 04:00 the next morning!
Welcome to the 3rd, and final video in the PRIME telescope dome series. As you saw last time, after lots of blood, sweat and tears, we eventually managed to assemble this huge dome! When our initial plans of sourcing a crane from one of the nearby wind-farm projects fell through, another week passed, during which a 40-ton crane had to be hired from Cape Town. This video features the eventual dome lift.
As you saw in my previous video where the wind ripped our dome in three, wind is an equally important consideration for the dome lift. The prediction for the next week Thursday and Friday looked good, so it was arranged that the crane will travel up to Sutherland on Wednesday, 16 June 2021 and do the dome lift first thing on Thursday morning. Since we still had a few tasks to do to be ready for the dome lift, we came up early and spent Wednesday finishing it all. However, by the end of the day, there was still no sign of the crane! Later that evening we got a message that they got held up with a job and is expected to get to site at 04:00 the next morning!
