Hey Tom Hole, More Info on Curved Spider?

Hi Tom,
Back about Christmas you posted that you installed one of the ProtoStar Curved secondary holders . Have you had a chance to use it and form any options? I just ordered one for the 8"/f6 I'm building and was wanting to get any info I could regarding installation, performance, etc. Thanks
Dave Burtrum

Dave,

I have had an opportunity to try it out and form an opinion.

The views are much more pleasing to my eye. Saturn was my best target for evaluation, but I also looked at Jupiter and globular clusters. The lack of spikes is outstanding. I love it. Where did the diffraction go? I dunno, as I cannot do a side by side comparison, but I like the fact that it is subtle and not a big bonk on the head (or 4 or 6 bonks as the case may be).

I did find that mounting it just to the Kydex worked fine until it got windy. In calm conditions, there it was rock solid. One windy night, it established a harmonic oscillation and all the starts turned into itty bitty lines. So, I have to mount it to the wood dowels on the UTA. Not difficult, and I expected this.

Collimation is as solid as my 4 vane. I roll the scope around on a wheeled eq platform and rarely take it apart. I have not collimated it since I put it together, although I check it every night. I'd say it is as consistent as the 4 vane, in my particular case.

Nottom line: the curved spider stays. I love the spike free views.

Tom