The SkyShed POD arrived just as we were moving house. This is not exactly how we planned this to go, but it will all work out.

The plans to install a SkyShed in our back yard in Beaverton were in progress, with the intention to have it sitting on a new patio near the back fence, when we started planning to move house. Everything happened very quickly at that point, and we ended up with a patio constructed just as the house sale got underway, and the SkyShed arrived in the midst of our packing to move. No matter; a big part of our plans to move to the new house was having a suitable location for the observatory to go, and we have much more space.

At some point, there will be a deck constructed for the observatory to sit on, and much thought will have to go into how to provide power and networking, since the likely site it some way from the house and trenching all that distance to install conduit seems a little impractical.

In the meantime, the observatory itself will be assembled and will just sit on the grass in the meadow below and behind the house. My plan is to set up my telescope just sitting on the ground inside, as it would at Oregon Star Party.

As far as the assembly goes, there’s not that much to write about; the whole thing was very straightforward and took an afternoon to do most of the assembly. The video instructions that come with the POD are all you need – just watch those and follow the steps.