The telescope that never was
After completing the Mark I telescope, now known as the Lovell telescope, plans were made for several others. Some of them were built and have lasted - the Mark II was built in the 1960s and is still in operation at the Observatory today. Some were built but have been decommissioned - the Mark III was located at Wardle but was dismantled in the early 1990s. Others never got off the drawing board.
One such telescope was the Mark V, a proposed radio telescope which would have been 400-ft in diameter (for comparison, the Lovell is a mere 250-feet accross). This telescope was to be situated in a valley at Meifod in Wales but in the end it was never constructed. The firm of Husband and Co., the consulting engineers who worked closely with Lovell to design and construct the other large telescopes, did build a scale model of the Mark V which in itself is an impressive piece of work. For some time the model has been sat in storage, but a group of us went to collect it a couple of weeks ago.
Left: The base of the scale model of the Mark V telescope. Right: the top of the Mark V model. CREDIT: Megan
It's in a bit of a sorry state, covered in dust and pine needles (no idea where they came from!) and a lot of the brass "girders" have come loose over the years. Over a weekend I started to clean it up, collecting as many loose bits as I could find and cleaning them up so they could be soldered back on. It really is an impressive piece of work, very detailed and must have taken an age to complete. After so many years of neglect a lot of the joints are now very fragile and the whole base structure looks in danger of collapse. The quadrupod which would have held the receivers has collapsed already and needs some patience to stick back together. The bowl itself is not in bad condition, apart from being absolutely filthy! When I opened the wooden box under the base I had quite a suprise - the model was driven! There was a complete drive system in there, complete with a simple lever system which would have allowed you to control the direction of motion.
I did try wiring the plug back on, with fire extinguisher on standby, but nothing happened. Probably a good thing, given the state of the base structure. After some investigation I got the drive system disconnected from the telescope structure, apart from the central drive shaft which would have controlled the elevation movement. Some other people have since had a go at it as well and got it seperated completely, but only by pulling the base structure in half! It looks like its going to be a big job to repair it and get it ready for display, but it will be fantastic when its done.
When we went to collect the Mark V, we also had a look at the rest of the items that we have in storage. This includes the Argus 100 computer which controlled the telescope before the Vax system was put in, and the old repeaters - a set of dials which used to sit in the control room and would tell the controller the position of the Lovell telescope (see above). Hopefully, when we have a new, larger visitor centre, some of this stuff might eventually go on display.
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