EP Testing Form

Right now William Paolini and I (mostly Bill) are woking on a form for testing EPs that would give a standard form for this purpose. Bill's work in Excel is looking very nice so far. I think that this could make EP rating much easier. You would just fill in the blanks with an x and the spreadsheet computes the score. Really cool!
Hope I am not letting the cat out of the bag!

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Meaouuwww! 8)
Looking good Floyd!
Nice work William! 8)

For those interested in helping out, where the pickle will be is in how to remove subjectivity from the rating of each category (i.e., row). What we need is a sentence or two (or three) describing what would justify a given rating. For some categories it will be easy. E.G., for "Scatter" we could define for instance the number of planet diameters that scatter appears on Jupiter which constitute the rating of significant, or some, etc. That way we'd have standard "guidance" for the rating process. For other categories it might have to remain completely subjective like for contrast or spot size unless the guidance picks some common brand eyepiece to be used as the middle ground standard. So these are the things I'd like to work on next, or get consensus on from those interested.

The weighting factors would be next, although they can be quite personal. But there could be several sets of weights that might characterize a type of observer. For instance, primarily DSO observers might consenses on one set of weights to be used, then that would be the standard for the rating and I could adjust the spreadsheet to just have a pulldown menu to choose your weighting factors (or customize your own), etc.

Anyway, these are my thoughts at the moment. Please help us out in ironing this concept out

-Bill

ps - I'm also thinking "External" reflections should be moved down to the Usability Performance section since these are easily eliminated in most cases by shielding around the focuser or eyeguards, etc.

I think that this is a fine idea Floyd. But, I doubt that it will stop all of the complaining. Perhaps some will simplky resort to complaining about the form. (Which is different from making thoughtful suggestions.)