> Any chance of seeing some photos of the burned house and the reflector ?
> Gus in Denver

Sometime :-).
The house didn't get burnt - an old well padded armchair on the back
porch did - it burnt off the padding all along one arm and did an
extremely good job of incinerating the pine planking used in one of
the arms and when I discovered it with smoke rising and charcoaled
plank glowing nicely the sun had moved on. The chair as a whole did
not catch fire - but many chairs in the exact same situation would
have. If it had it may or may not have fired the house - it was in an
alcove against an outside wall  to our dining room with a plastic
clear roof above. Could easily have been far far worse.

My wife had previously suggested that the system was a fire hazard but
I pointed out that with the short focus and need for the dish to point
at the sun etc AND to have significant combustible material at the
focus, with the whole being unmounted, there was essentially zero
chance of it doing any damage. and, I was correct. But Murphy
conspired with me to set up an otherwise almost impossibly optimum
solution to achieve the "desired" aim. I'd have had trouble convincing
the insurance people that it was an accident - if I'd lived :-).

That was a 660mm oval dish. The 2.4m circular one will be interesting
when I get to it :-).


      Russell
--=20
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