Posts Made By: Floyd Blue

Anyone have any thought as to the quality of the Meade ellipitcal flats for diagonal mirrors?
I am concidering getting one as a replacement for mine that is scratched up.
Floyd

I would like to hear good or bad comments about the Elliptical flats used by Meade in their scopes.
Good quality, bad quality?
Thanks,
Floyd

This is my 1971 VW Super Beatle with Auto-Stick Shift. It is actually quite rare.
Not a muscle car, but a cool car.
Floyd

Excellent!
Floyd

Excellent easy sollution! I have looked at a similiar matterial myself.
Floyd

Here is a pic of a few friends at one of our sites. My 15" is in the middle of the pic, I am not in the pic! ;^)
Floyd

I need to buy two 4000 step digital encoders to set up my 12.5" DOB with the Sky Commander. Anyone know of a good place to just buy encoders?
Floyd

Tonight I took out the 12.5" for a test using then new 2 fan cooling system.
It seemed to cool faster and achieve a steady view in about 1 hour. No rolling in the out of focus images after this time.
I did a comparison between the Ultras and the Orthos. I used the Trapizium as the target for the testing.
I found that the "F" and "G" stars were resolved with the 9mm and 12.5mm Orthos, but the 10mm and 15mm Ultras failed to resolve the "G" star. So 6 for the Orthos and 5 for the Ultras. I repeated the test several times to be certain.
I also noted that the 12mm Nagler T-4 resolved all 6 stars. as did the 8.8mm Meade UWA. The 6.7mm UWA did not resolve the 6th star however.
I was unable to resolve the 6th star with the 7mm Ortho or any under the 9mm. The night was not the best, but the test was still sucessful.
I also tried the 12mm Nagler with the Big Barlow and found that it gave about the same image of Saturn that was achieved with the 6mm Ortho. That was a surprise! It was not quite as sharp, but the difference was very slight.
Interestingly, I tried a few EPs on the Moon for whole images and to my surprise, the 26mm Meade 4000 Plossl gave almost as good a view as the 25mm Ortho! The Ortho showed a little more detail in the smaller craters than the Meade. The 20mm Meade Plossl however did not produce a
sharp image like the 26mm.
I have been spending a lot of time testing as of late when the evenings let me. I am trying to see how well the new 12.5" DOB is doing with all the changes I have done to it. So far I have been quite pleased with the results.
Floyd

Here is my latest improvement for the DOB. It is a battery box for the cooling fans. The knob is for speed adjustment and the rocker switch is for off and on.
This is also the counter wieght for the scope and alows me to use the 31mm Nagler and other large EPs. It does not cause a problem with balance with the smaller EPS. Total wieght is about 1.5 lbs.
Wanted something that looked good as well as funtional.
Floyd

Looks like a Fastar type secondary. Just like the one on my NS8GPS.
Floyd