Night #20 (2009/01/03) Idiosyncrasies of a Dome

I did not mention this, but yesterday we have, for the first time, opened part of the dome that we had not before. The dome "door" is composed of two parts. The bottom part can be opened to allow the telescope to see below 30º of altitude. However, because the bottom part is opened by engaging it to the top one, when it is opened we loose the ability to see near the zenith.

Again tonight we have opened this bottom part for our early night target: WR140, which is setting progressively sooner after sunset. For targets after HD 4004 (WR1) or HD 14134, that are mostly crossing the meridian by the time we point at them, we must close the dome to disengage the bottom part and open again only the top part of the dome window.
There is just this tiny extra "bug" in the process: the bottom part only locks or unlocks itself to/from the top part on certain dome orientations! So we also need to rotate the dome towards North (at least we know it works this way), then close the slit, disengage it, open the slit again, and turn the dome to the new position.
Of course, you can't turn the dome while you are opening/closing the slit, because the motor for that needs to be plugged on one of four wall outlets. For further unneeded details I can say that the slit opening/closing motor operates by wireless control but must "warm up" for a few seconds before it reacts to the remote. Oh and the door to the dome room must be closed!
So the unneeded details on the complete 14-step process to change from a low target to one near the zenith are: close door, rotate dome North, plug motor in, wait a few seconds, press "cerrar" button on the remote, move the stairs to below the slit, wait for dome to finish closing (45 seconds, maybe) while climbing the stairs, safely disengage bottom part of the slit door, climb down from the stairs (the remote does not work with the telescope between you and the receiver), press "abrir" button on the remote, move stairs to appropriate position, start pointing the telescope using the setting circles while slit opens, unplug the slit motor, and finally rotate dome so you can look through the finder and visually finalize pointing the telescope.
Some may not enjoy this, but I do! It makes us be part of the telescope...