Posts Made By: Floyd Blue

Can you comment on whether the reflections from the filters are really that reduced over the Type I filters or others you have used?

My new filters arrived in stock and will be shipped today.
Now I guess I will have to put my Astronomik filters up for sale in the classifieds. May wait until I get a chance to test the new ones first though. 8)
I hope that they are worth the expense for the upgrade. I think they will be though.

Got the new Gen 2 filters today. I installed them in the CFW-9 and am ready to try them out! Excited is the word.
They are a lot thicker, the filter ring, about 2x thicker than the Astronomik filters. But it looks like they will work fine. I was concerned about clearance, but I think they fit.
Now I have a lot of extra filters, so time for a ad I guess.
Hope to get out his New Moon for some testing.

Good news, I got a chance to test last night. The results were nothing less than startling! I only did testing while auto-guiding, but that was where I got the first data, so it allowed me to compare the data from guide logs from PHD taken before and after the gearbox was installed. The logs were imported into PECPrep and PE was calculated for the Frequency Spectrum Graph. The other PE data was uncorrected so that all PE was shown as it was logged by PHD with no smoothing.

The peak to peak overall PE was reduced to about 16" after installation from 3.5" before installing the gearbox. There was no sign of any gearbox noise more than .1-.2". The biggest error was now the 79 sec error of .5" which is the worm. The PE graph was so changed, it looked like it was from another mount! To say that I was amazed would be an understatement. :^) Every aspect of the PE was reduced by a factor of maybe 3.5x!

It seems that the gearbox was responsible for a lot more of the PE than I originally thought. So many spikes that were at intervals that I could not isolate their source, appear to have been caused by the teeth and gears or the shafts running without bearings in the original gearbox. Not sure exactly which were the culprits, but I believe the nylon gear was probably responsible as well as the smaller pinion for a lot of it. I think that the teeth of the Nylon gear are very uneven and that each one creates another spike of PE that is added to the overall PE and that much of this then appeared to be worm related.

That was what Roland said when he reviewed a PE graph I posted. He said the gearbox was a big area for improvement and he was more than correct! His pointing out that the plastic gear and the non-precision stamped gears of the gearbox were causing a great deal of noise was not only true, I had underestimated its impact.

So, I am pretty convinced that this is a very significant improvement for the G-11. I guess it will require others to make this mod and test to see if my results are a fluke or not, but I did do more than one test last night in different areas of the sky to be sure that I was getting good data. The results were identical on these tests, so totally repeatable.

I did a 5 minute unguided shot, just to see what it would look like. There was a little drift due to my polar alignment, but there was no signs of PE in the stars, just a slight elongation of all stars from the drift.

I am waiting now for the other gearboxes to arrive so that I can replace the DEC box. It won't have as great an impact, but it will certainly help and the noise level should be significantly reduced.

I will try to get some screen shots of the before and after tests in PECPrep and post them later so that you can see the difference.

Last night I went to a local site to do some testing of the new filters as well as the new MClennan Gearbox that I had installed on the G-11. I will not get into the mount tests, they are found in the Mount and Losmandy forums here.

But the filters I will discuss a little.

I have used Meade and Astronomik RGBL filters in the past and had read about and seen the results of the new Gen 2 filters and their suppression of internal reflections on bright stars. Some before and after shots with the Gen 1 and Gen 2 filters that people showed me were impressive.

So I decided to buy the filters and see for myself, whether there was a big improvement.

My shots of M45 and The Horse Head were plagued with reflections of Alnitak and the bright stars of M45 in the nebula. So I went out last night and did some test images of both these objects as well as Sirius and Betelgeuse to check for reflections. There were no reflections at all with 10 minute exposures. I did have a misalignment issue that was the camera in the focuser, but later I found that and then there were no aberrations or reflections at all. The filters showed nothing but the stars!

So, these filters do indeed eliminate the reflections that are so common on these type objects and situations. The cost is greater, $450 for the set compared to $279 for the Astronomik set, but if you can afford the difference, you will see the difference.

I am pleased with the filters and look forward to more exposures with them.

Hey, I am retired and my income is not that much. So, if you want to pay for my medical coverage as I get older and need more attention, great! Because I will not have to pay huge amounts of income tax to pay for it all and at my age I will never see the debt paid off that was incurred in giving this medical coverage. So, I guess it is actually good for me. But not so sure it will be good for my kids and grand children that will have to pay back all this money. I think they will be paying an additional 15% tax to cover this kind of health care, based on what I was told that they pay in England. Am I correct about that?
Well, I can only tell you that when you are on a fixed income, then 10-15% is a very big deal. But hey, what can I do, they are going to do what they want and it is not up to us anyway.

If the health care system is changed, who pays for all this, the rich as Obama said? NOOOO!
IF you have a lot of money, chances are you do not pay a lot of tax. My grandfather was quite rich, I got none of it by the way , but he paid no taxes, his accountants made sure of that.
If you are poor or middle class, you will pay your share or you will go to jail.
So, it will be most of the middle class that will pay the lion's share of the bill. The very poor will pay nothing and the stinking rich will also pay nothing. The middle class will get poorer and the rich will get richer. Nothing changes except the percentage they take from the working class.
If you are a senator, you will pay if you want an appointment.

I find a lot of sizes of rubber and plastic end caps for round legs at Floyd's Hardware store. I would think that other hardware stores would also carry a lot of these. Perhaps you could find a replacement and then just get a 4 pack of them, replace all 3 and keep a spare?

I think that to reach the companies, you need to write a letter, not an email, to the corporate office and tell your tale.

Many times people on the lower end of the chain do not inform those at the high end of the problems incurred during business. So, they do nothing to improve it.

But, if everyone that had a problem would write a letter of explanation, this just might change. I guess a phone call could work, but do you really know whether the person you are talking to is in charge? That is of course a problem with a letter too, but if address to the CEO or Customer Service Dept head, you will probably get it to that person or their secretary.

I have had to do this a few times and in almost every case, I got resolution from the top.

What ever happened to the right to free speech? Does this only apply to those that agree with your philosophy? How can one person be removed and yet freedom of opinion still be upheld?

If you do not want to listen or watch a program, don't! You are not required to watch or listen, you have a choice to watch something else, right?

So why do you think that anyone has the right to take anyone off the air for expressing his or her opinion?

Is this what the founding fathers had in mind, or is this just the opposite?

Freedom of speech is for everyone, including Limbaugh or any Liberals that also wish to be heard.

Whether you wish to hear them, that is your freedom to listen.