Posts Made By: Mark Bungart

I would just use the tried and true method of a gallon of distilled water and one drop of Dawn detergent. Kriege promotes this technique for his Obsessions. Ive done this on my 15"Swayze mirror a few times and am always very pleased with the results.

Ive uses Collodion a number of times on various mirrors and corrector plates. Remarkeable job. I thnk it works best for corrector plates since it can be bit of a pain sometimes. The fumes can also lead to a fun time for all involved

Mark

Ok, a bit late to the game, but I'll chime in. Reading through the posts, there are some very good points. I own a 15" Obsession with a wonderful Swayze mirror. Steve also doesnt publish test results, merely saying that he was happy with the figure of the mirror and how smooth it was. Carl recommned him to me as a good choice for an Obsession.First light was jaw dropping to say the least. I looked at SM when deciding, but really had lusted for an Obsession for years. I prefer the look of the truss tubes on the outside of the box, it also makes the box smaller and lighter. I have helped set up and observed with a 25" Obsession. That was an easy set up for a scope that huge. My 15 is a breeze to set up and collimate. Collimation stays dead on all night. There a number of dob builders that use the mirror sling, as well as other methods such as the wiffle mount,etc. Ive always been happy with Dave's support ( rarely needed tho), and he is very active on the Obsession group. He and Richard Berry wrote the book on how to build an Obsession clone. If you've read the book, you know that the first few chapters are all about those who innovated the truss design before Dave got started. He freely aknowledges those ideas he used to start Obsession. I personally feel that both gentlemen did the hobby a great service by publishing the book with the incredible detail about building similar scopes. Ive seen a number of "Obsession clones" built as a result of that book.
Finally, there are a number of other dob builders to consider. T-Scopes, Plettstone, Nightsky and a few others I'm obviously forgetting. My club has a 16" Astrosystems that is very nice.I would bet that any of these builders offer a scope that would be of high quality and provide years of great views.

The Obsession-SM debate is eerily similar to the Mac-PC debate ( Macs win!!) LOL!!!


Mark

Jay Emirzian said:

I'd like to pick up a 5 mm eyepiece and a big fan of the Pentax line in short focal lengths and Naglers in long. I currently have the 7mm and 10.5mm XL's. My scope is a 15" Obsession without drives or a tracking platform. So being all manual it is important to have an eyepiece with a larger AFOV. I had owned the baader hyperion 5mm for a while, but sold it because of the way it fit in my focuser. It was a good eyepiece. Fairly sharp at the edge of the field with only a hint of false color around the edge. I guess my biggest question would be how much of a diffrence would I see in the 5.2 XL vs the 5 XW? What did they change? Is the extra 5 degrees worth spending extra money for? Should I go for the Nagler because of the 82 degrees? I'm not a real big fan of the Naglers for shorter focal lengths.

Thanks,
Jay

Jay,

I too have a 15" Obsession and I have a 5mm Pentax XW. I really like the eyepiece, very comfortable to use and very sharp images.

Mark

My Obsession 15 with Swayze mirror.......love that scope.

My C8 in it's day was my best buddy, but aperture rules baby

John O'Neill said:

What world are you living in. 18 months ago we had a healthy real estate market, low unemployment, one third the national debt we have now, monitary superiority in forign markets and a sence of well being(thou not perfect)wihin the country. There is a reason that the faith in our congress is at a record low with a 11% approval rating and a president that is not far behind and it has nothing to do with Bush. You need to take heed to what is happeing to our country AND STOP BLAMING BUSH and place the blame where it belongs. Can ypu honestly say you are better off now than 18 months ago. I certainly cant.

OK, lets look at some actual stats, first from the federal labor dept.http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet
The lowest unemployment figures occurred during the 2 term of Pres Clinton, with unemployment reaching 4.0%
Unemployment under Pres Bush rose beginning in 2007 from 5% and climbed dramatically over 9.3% by the end of 2008 , the highest unemployment in over 20 years. So , THAT argument is false.


Real Estate Market:
2008 was the worse year for home sales in over a decade, according to the Commerce Dept in Dec of 2008.
Avg price of a homes fell by 13% Sales of newly built homes fell 2.9% from October 2008 to a pace of 407,000 units, the slowest rate in nearly 18 years. The median price of a new home sold in November 2008 was $220,400, a drop of 11.5% from the sales price a year ago and the biggest year-over-year price decline since March.

Ok, so lets call that argument a bust as well.

Debt-complicated- http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/
Under Reagan, the debt increased by 20% ( Remember those big tax cuts, massive defense spending...sound familiar?)
Under Bush ( Senior) the debt increased another 15% ( he got hammered by being honest about a tax increase)
Under Clinton, the debt DECREASED by 10%
Under Bush Jr the debt increased by 27% ...more big tax cuts and massive defense spending on 2 wars. From 63.5 % of GDP to 85% of GDP. Thats substantial.

The important thing to remember here is that under the last administration, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were NOT budgetary items, they were paid for by separate spending bills. This is a tidy way of not having to account for those costs in the budget, makes the budget look more balanced than it actually was.
Obama administration is at least being honest and incorporating those costs into the budget, so yes, budgetary outlays are bigger, because of those 2 wars being accounted for in the budget now.
The fiscal budget for 2009 was mostly a Bush budget, it included the massive TARP funds for the bank bailouts.

So, no matter who got elected, McCain or Obama, they would have inherited a massive problem. And every respected economist said the only way out was for govt spending. The stock market TANKED in 2008, losing over 35% of its wealth. Credit for new investing was virtually non existent. The ONLY money available was gov spending.


So, IM not sure what world YOU were living in in 2008, but that was one very tough year for many people.