[SJAAboard] SJAA Loaner Telescope Program

[Rob Hawley (SJAA)]

>I am glad Rob (and you, and Lee) are willing to devote so
>much effort, but as Rob indicated last night, he is only interim as a member of
>the loaner telescope committee.

I am not objecting to the workload. I consider the time commitment to be rather
trivial. My offer last night was to assume the role on a permanent basis (if the
board approves). By approving Gary's goals last night it is clear the board
intends the program to be something I can support.

Another reason I originally insisted on only being the interim lead was that I
was concerned that I would be stuck acting as a storage sink.  Thanks to Lee and
others that has not happened.

The board should discuss the loan request that Rich is concerned about.  My gut
also tells me it is not appropriate especially given Craig's comments.  The
program is currently in Sabbatical so we will not deal with the request until
August.  At least one board meeting will happen in the meantime.

WD-2 reduces the inventory, but with the motivation of providing better service
to the members.  I could not make one of the scope loans last night since the
scope was missing parts (or to be more precise someone replaced the appropriate
parts with poor substitutes).  Given the age of the bolts in question this
happened some time ago.  The scopes we loan must be in working order.  This is
easily fixed; however, since this scope is on the WD-2 remove list anyway this
will give us an opportunity to pull it from the inventory.  The loanee preferred
to wait for the Ultima (and its electronics) instead of taking this scope.

I hope that Rich reconsiders.


Rob Hawley