Posts Made By: Floyd Blue

Michael,
Drool! ;^)
That is another great looking scope. I would expect nothing less from you of course.
I see you have equipted it with a FeathrTouch too. Nice touch!
It looks like it is DSC equipted too? Is that what I see on the side, the encoder arm?
Floyd

Well, I had a chance to try the Super-Wide 8mm and 17mm last night on a 15" f/4.2 scope.
The EPs performed surprisingly well. Edge sharpeness was on par with a Panoptic as well as performance in contrast and brightness.
I compared it to the 14mm UWA and other than the FOV being less at 65° instead of 84° it was close. The 14mm is slightly better on edge perhaps, but the Panoptic was not really any better.
Over all, though high prices at $245, they are a nice EP.
We also got a chance to try the Kendix 2" Laser collimator. This is really a nice unit at $150. Easy to use in a solid tube DOB. Well built and it has nylon screws to adjust it to the diameter of your focuser barrel, which is a nice touch.
Viewed a lot of objects last night, the viewing was pretty good at 5,300'. Lots of Galaxies and Clusters.
Hope your night was as good.
Floyd

I have a little vibration when tapped with my 12.5" DOB. I am trying to figure out what might be the cause and fix.
Anyone have any ideas?
This is the picture of it and you can see the construcion method.
The dampening takes about 3 seconds to stop the vibration.
Floyd

Ahh, another Pinos evening, complete with snow and cool air. Views were good and temperature was actually mild that evening.
Floyd

Lowest prices paid for your TV rejects. All sizes and types are acceptable. Please state your lowest possible price on your junkie items and I will allow up to 35% or the retail price.
;^)
Floyd

There is a new Sponser, SciTech, that does refiguring. They guanatee some mighty impressive numbers!
This is one of the mirrors they have for sale.
(8" f/7.5 Parabolic Mirror 1/33.4 P-V, Strehl ratio .998
Pyrex Substrate, 1.375" thick)
The refiguring is guanteed to be
"Re-Figure Specification:
We will re-figure your mirror to a minimum specification of the following:
Strehl Ratio of .960 or higher
RMS Surface error of 8.4nm or better
P-V Surface Error of 1/18 wave or better"

My question would be this.
Would it be worthwhile to spend $314 ,including coating, to refigure a 12.5" mirror that was 1/10 wave of better by Discovery?
Would you gain enough to make the cost worth while?
I am wondering about this as I could use a recoating on this mirror as it has spots of something on it like over spray that will not come off with anything. Doesn't seem to hurt the images, but it would be nice if they were not there. I have thought about a better figure and coating a lot, but can not decide wether it would really be that visually improved when it was finished.
What do you guys think?
Floyd

What a wonderful color combination mother nature supplies! ;^)
Floyd

James,
Nice combo!
Floyd

A friend just gave me a filter slide for the DOB. I will try using it, but I do have a lot of intrusion with the Feathertouch whem racked in all the way. But I think I never use that much rack in anyway. I will give it a try and see if it will work. It is a nice piece and seems to work well. Home made of course. ;^)
Floyd

Ok! This weekend I got a chance to really check out the scope for the source of the vibrations. What I found in the end was the Azimuth bearing bolt assembly was allowing to much play between the rocker box and the base board. It became apparent after I eliminated the Alt bearings as the source. I made a teflon bearing that slipped over the bolt between the plate and the base board flange. This acts as a spacer between them and makes for zero play in the bearing assembly. So now it is very solid like the 15" of the same design. Not sure why this 12.5" displayed this tendency when the 15" did not. But I guess it doesn't matter as long as there is a solution.
Floyd