Posts Made By: Jim Carpenter

Tim,
As Don says, they come from the same Chinese factory, which is Norin Optech. Essentially the same binoviewer is sold by Burgess, William Optics, Stellarvue, Orion, Celestron, and others. There are minor cosmetic differences and a few more substantial differences among them, and the Baader version seems to have more "customization" than the others. One of the resellers, Stellarvue, claims to have higher QC and has rejected up to 90% of the samples received. The choice of which to purchase boils down to a) Availability, b) Brand loyalty, and c) which of the resellers has the best reputation for QC and customer support. I happen to have the Stellarvue version and am very pleased with it, as I have been with everything I've purchased from SV. So my choice was based on b) and c).

Jim

Bill,
I'm not interested in starting a code/no code debate, but I'm always suspicious of surveys like this, especially if you assume a half million or so hams in the US then the sampling represents 0.0001% of American hams. Straight key night has always been a rather limited affair with a small, but dedicated group of participants. Most of us, myself included, have better things to do on New Years eve (call it a life). I suspect that has more to do with whether or not one plans to participate in SKN than any pro- or anti-code bias.

ARL FIFTY EIGHT
Jim WD5BKO

Ed,
Have you contacted Ten-Tec?

Jim
WD5BKO

You might check this Italian firm out:
http://www.astromeccanica.it/binoscopes.htm
At the very bottom of the page they say they do custom work.

Jim

Hi Nate,
If you're looking for something relatively small to carry into the field, consider the Stellarvue SV80S, an apo refractor that has zero CA according to most users. At f-6, it can be used at prime focus (with a short extension tube) and should give you reasonable flexibility in most lighting conditions. The refractor design will not have the shadow of the secondary mirror that you see in your 90mm Meade Mak. As a bonus, several people are using the SV80S with fantastic results for astrophotography. It is considerably smaller than the Orion 80ED, which is longer (f-7.5) and uses a 100mm diameter tube, plus its triplet design has better performance than the 80ED which is a doublet.

Jim

Ron,
Stellarvue did this for a while with their now-discontinued 102mm doublet achro, which had a attenuation coating on the lens. It got mostly good reviews. The original SV102D was produced both with and without the attenuated lens. The attenuated lens had a bluish coating, and the non-attenuated lens has a green coating. The later version of the same scope, redesignated the SV102DN, did not have have attenuated lenses. The attenuated lens was dropped after SV developed a custom MV filter whose curve was optimized for the SV doublet achros. According to Vic Maris, less than 200 of the 102mm doublet achros were made, but I don't know how many of these had the attenuated lens.

You can find all the above info in posts by Vic by doing a search of the archives of Stellarvue Yahoo forum.

Jim

Nice shot, Ivan. What did you use to stitch the panorama?
Jim

Steven,
One other thing to consider when evaluating these non-SLR digital cameras is shutter lag. Many have a significant lag between the time you push the shutter button and the image is actually recorded. This can be quite important on a moving subject. In my case, I decided on an DSLR rather than one of this class of camera, even though they are very attractive when you consider all the other features.

Jim

While amateur radio is great for many communications needs, it is not always the "best" solution for the problems mentioned. Just as you must be in range of a cell phone tower to use a cell phone, you must be in range of a VHF or UHF repeater to use your ham radio (unless you mean HF, which entails a great deal more expense for mobile use). Of course you can use simplex, but that means someone must be monitoring the frequency within the simplex range, which is essentially line-of-sight. Even assuming you are within range of a repeater, there is not always someone monitoring remote repeaters to respond to a call, and there may not be an autopatch on the repeater. Then there is the prohibition on commercial calls on an autopatch unless it is an emergency.

Ham radio is a great hobby, and without question the most reliable means of communication in a true emergency (like last year's hurricanes), but if I did a lot of back-country solo 4-wheeling or hiking a satellite phone would be high on my list of necessities. Remember the guy who was solo hiking in Utah a couple of years ago and got his hand caught under a boulder? After three or four days with no food or water, he ended up cutting his arm off with a pocket knife so he could reach help. His chances of getting help would have been much greater with a satellite phone. Of course that would assume that the phone could see a satellite from a narrow, steep canyon.

73 de Jim WD5BKO

Dave,
I tried the 7-21, but the FOV was way too narrow for my taste so I returned it. I have a Vixen 8-24mm zoom, which is similar to the Televue without the click stops, and it's not too bad -- still pretty narrow though compared to even a Plössl. I believe Orion sells a branded version of this same EP.

Jim