Posts Made By: Floyd Blue

Yahooo! The EQ Platform finally arrived and it seems to work fine. I now need to get it up on the mountain and see how it tracks. This should be fun with the DSC and the tracking.
Now to learn how to use it and set the speed control.

I find the 40mm Orion Optiluxe 2" 62° FOV to be pretty good, especiaooy in a slower scope. The FOV is larger than my 31mm Nagler and it is pretty well corrected for a fast scope, not perfect but neither is the 31mm Nagler in a f/4.3.

Well, I have spent a couple of days doing some tinkering with the platform. I put in stops for the movement, tic marks for the reset-center-full travel so I can keep up with the motion and time. I increased the motion to 1hr 15min per run. Added a permanent compass and center line. Put on a new coat of Urethane to protect the wood and parts that were not painted. Added a couple of bumbers for standing the platform on end when in storage. Made a lift handle from a 1" x 1" x 12" piece of plywood so that it is easy to grab and pull for the manual reset of the platform. Made two lifting feet for the North end to give me 3.5° lift for the local 35.5L latitude, the platform was made for 32°.
I am ready for another night now. Hopefully the weather will continue clear and nice for a while.

First thing to do is to find out what the stuff is on the mirror. It could be from dew or it could be deteriorated coatings. If you can not take the scope apart yourself, then send it in to have it inspected. Then you can decide about coatings.

There is only one perfect scope, the one you use all the time! 8)
For some that is a refractor and some it takes a reflector. But in the end it is only perfect if it fits your needs and your car.

I just thought some might be interested in seeing what a EQ Platform looks like with the parts labeled. It could be useful for a home built project or just as an example of what they are like. Single axis model EQ Platform.

I know this has been discussed before, but I would like to hear from those who have actually installed them on their scopes and used them. I specifically would like to know about planetary detail compared to the straight vanes, not the pleasing look, but the hard facts about the actual details seen on planets with the two different spiders.
I am considering one for my new ZZ-10 scope and would like to hear about your experiences pro or con.

What post? Must have missed it.

I can only say that a lot of EPs are on the market with claims of 60-70° FOV that might have that in total FOV, but the usable FOV is only about 50°! So why not just by a good 50° FOV Plossl? If all you get is a fuzzy out 20-30% then this is useless to me.
If you advertise 65° then I expect a good crisp 65°. :S Especially if the ads tell you to expect it.
I had the same problem with the 25mm WO Swan. That EP in my opinion was total crap. I mean it even looked poor in an f/10 SCT! Same thing with the GSO Superview, it flat sucked. All the wide FOV was worthless because of color aberrations of all kinds or just plain fuzzy.
Truth in advertising is a fallacy, so keep up on telling it like you see it. 8)

I was talking with a friend about collimation tools yesterday. He talked of using the Catseye 2" and how much he liked it. My Starmaster came with one, but I did not get it with the purchase as the owner wanted to keep it.
So I was sitting there thinking of what to do and I came up with an idea. 8) I thought, how about making a 2" Auto Collimator of sorts.
So I took a piece of aluminum sheet that I had laying around a polished a section of it to a mirror shine. I then found a plastic spice bottle that was 2" in diameter and cut the bottom off at the right length. I then cut the aluminum into a 2" circle and drilled a hole through the center. I also drilled a hole in the center of the bottom of the plastic bottle that I had cut to length. I lined the inside of the bottle with self adhesive black felt and then put double stick film on the back of the mirror I had made and slipped it to the bottom of the bottle.
I then collimated the scope using a Kendrick laser and a 1.25" Auto Collimator I already have. Then I dropped in the new device to see how it worked. My mirror is center spotted with a Catseye triangle with the center hole for laser use. The hole I drilled in the aluminum mirror was just the right size to make a black dot just under the size of the center hole in the triangle. The dot was exactly centered in the hole! 8O I then turned the collimation bolts on the primary to put it out of collimation. The dot was not in the hole, which I expected. So I moved them until it was again centered and dang if the other tools did not agree that it was perfectly collimated!
The thing about this tool is how easy it is to use. You are not having to merge triangles or made judgments as to whether the images are perfectly merged, just place the black dot in the center of the hole in the triangle with a slight reflections ring around it that shows if it is not perfectly centered quite well. The hole can be made to just fit the hole in your mirror center spot by increasing the size until it fits perfectly. It is a bit like a Cheshire I guess, but it is built more like the Auto collimator. Here are three picture that show the details.
This was my first attempt and I might build a better one of pipe and cap, but for now it works so well I think I will just use it.