Really interesting and informative sessions included a panel discussion with Wayne Brown of Apogee Instruments, Doug George of Cyanogen Productions and Arne Henden of the USNO Flagstaff. Dennis DiCicco of Sky & Telescope provided interesting commentary to the panel discussion.

In an interesting development, Ed Byers described his new drive design using a computer controlled tangent arm sector drive. Bob Bell reported on a test he performed on the drive and pronounced it without discernable error except for the tracking error caused by differential refraction in the atmosphere over the 20 or 30 minute test. (That sounds like a correction one could add in a short while with a short subroutine to the operating control system.) The drive operates up to 2 hours before having to be reset, which takes about 3 minutes. Ed also stated he was moving to Texas from Barstow and may discontinue his machine work. His drives are the world standard, and his retirement will create a huge gap in precision drive suppliers.