Posts Made By: Tom Rodstrom

The last thing I ever expected to see was sleaze from the Supreme Count. The Florida decision really hurt my opinion of the Court, but there were some logical arguments for that course of action. Scalia's long time close friendship with Cheney alone should be enough, but after the hunting trip, there is NO excuse at all for him not to recuse himself.

This, more than the economy, the Iraq war or anything else, is reason do dump Bush and Ashcroft. It is just what you would expect from someone who lost a Congressional race to a dead person.

That sounds good to me. I think it is important for the President of the United States to release his service records if there is any doubt that he served honorably.

There seems to be some concern about his not flying for the last two years of his enlistment. This is unusual since it is VERY expensive to train a pilot. If he has nothing to be ashamed of, he can simply sign a release form for his military records during that period.

I feel sorry for Jeff. He has some tough (for him) decisions to make, like:

"Should I buy earmuffs or should I continue to let this hollow head of mine whistle in the wind."

Since he does not give a damn about anyone else, I guess everyone else will have to get used to the whistling.

Civil penalties are nothing. There is a special place in Hell for murders, rapists, child molesters, and people that go slow in the fast lane.

In one driver education pamphlet here in California, I saw a phrase something like: "Common sense and California state law says that slower traffic must keep right." It went on to say that it did not matter whether the person behind you was speeding, you were obligated to keep right. I don't know if it has ever been enforced.

I had a similar problem. I have a 5" F7.2 Petzval military surplus refractor. The scope has a fully corrected 5" diameter field so I didn't want to use conventional baffling for an eyepiece. The inside of the tube was not exactly round where it was not machined for lens cells.

I used a CAD program to do ray traces from the outer edge of the objective to the opposite side of the tube to the first lens of the corrector. It turned out that to get a full 5" diameter light path I needed about a dozen baffles spaced about 2" apart.

I made the baffles out of some black paper that was similar to the material used for file folders except for the color. I cut the baffles with a I.D. just under 5" and an odd. of about 6". I cut the circles with a compass that had a razor blade rather than a pen. I used 2" strips of medium density black foam between the baffles. The foam strips were cut so the ends just touch when they are inside the tube. The strips have enough stiffness stay against the side of the tube. Assembly is simple, you just slide in a strip followed by a ring and repeat until they are all in place.

I've had the scope for 6 years and the baffles have not given me any problems. The baffles work very well and the the scope has excellent contrast. Someday if ever get a suitable mount, I'd like to try taking a 4" x 5" photograph with it. It certainly is an interesting design. The last lens in like a soup bowl with a 1 3/8" sagita. To use it as a telescope I had to cut 6" off the original tube and install a focuser. The focuser extends 1" into the field lens when it is fully retracted.

Can you give us a reason, Herb?

Was it for language, hate speech, profanity, another auction site? I don't see this notice on other forums. This forum has some trolls and things sometimes get pretty bad, but no one wants to be subjected to the "blue button" so any advice would be appreciated.

Joe, I have no use whatsoever for Bu$h, his policies, or his administration and want to see him go, but I certainly do not want to see what happened in Spain happen here. For a little perspective, we have seven times the population of Spain which had 200 killed and 1500 wounded. Percentagewise, an equal tragedy in the US would mean 1400 killed and 10,000+ wounded.

You are right about representation, however. The governments of Spain and Australia, and others I'm sure, supported this war against the wishes of the majority of their population.

I have a 4 1/4" Jaegers and am very impressed with it's performance. It's a good planetary scope and absolutely stunning in the moon. With the moon, the contrast is so good it's like being there. I have a 5" semi-apo and a Questar 7 which I used for comparison. It's definitely worth using, but $900 is way too much for a tube in my opinion.

You need some 4" thin wall aluminum tubing, a focuser, an adapter plate for the focuser and a couple baffles. Add a Telrad finder and a pair of Orion tube rings and you are there. If you are short on time for scope building, watch for a Jaegers 4 1/4" on Astromart and buy it. You can pick one up for a lot less that $900. You could sell your lens to someone else who has the time to make a tube.

I'm in San Diego. If you would like to send me the lens, I'd be happy to use my OTA to compare your lens to the one I have.

Have you tried the moon at around 300x?