Posts Made By: Tom Mengel

If you want more history and such look at the NASA websites and http://www.astronomydaily.com/index.asp for current astro event kind of things and very simple sky charts.

If you want a home-based start charting program that may be a bit challenging (but not more so that many others and many kids these days will take it as a piece of cake):

Chartes de Ciel - (look on the web).

It's FREE and it can be configured from mild ("realistic" looking bitmap stars and simple plaitarium vews/interface) to wild (many large star/specialty data bases you can load, interface to Deepsky 2002 for really in-depth searches and observation lists, load and overlay images from ESA and NASA sky surveys, etc.). It also has a "daily event" and sunrise/sunset lists that are helpful all the normal search options (Planets, deep-sky, stars).. It can be warped back or forward in time 10,000 years or so (want to see what the Wise-men saw while they were looking for Jesus? No problem, just set the date to 3 BC or so and antimate the view back and forth a few years in either direction ... things like that).

It will take some setting up, but the install on later Win 2000/XP class systems is not bad. You do have to put in your home Lat;Long and time-zone parameters and such to set it up. But this application is the equal to many (I might say any I've see) more costly programs you can buy. It's a labor of love by many world-wide ATM's types who program and it shows. And (did I mention?) it's FREE, so you don't have to cry too much if it does not work out - just do the included un-install to remove it.

My cheap two cents - TM

Jean,

The board for a LX-3 should not be all that complicated. It's a quartz controlled osc. into a power amplifier driving a transformer for the RA drive motor (probably not even PEC adjustments onboard). A very straight forward desin to anyone into radio/electronics. My guess (assuming the fuse is OK) is that it's probably a bum capacitor at that age. Look for some slight heat/bubble damage on the plastic coated "can-like" board items. In your case the hardest part may be getting the PC board out of the mounting base, however.

Any TV or Radio repair shop worth it's salt should be able to remove and "back engineer" the board for the design and then repair it. Also, try the local Radio Armature group in your city and I'd bet they might even do it for free if you offer to let them look through it when it's fixed.

Good luck! TM

Amen!

I've known several folks in electric wheelchairs and that seems like a very $$ answer to your problem (new full size wheelchairs run about 6K dollars last time I looked). Are you thinking of a full blown wheelchair or one of the motorized "scoot about" chairs that I see at assisted living centers all the time?

I would be careful - many electric wheelchairs can go FAST (10 MPH+)!! And you will be raising the center of gravity on that "system" (esp. if it is narrow enough to get through doorways) with a tall scope and accessories. You might want to either redo the motor to wheel gear ratios or put some kind of limiter on the motor control. Many wheelchairs do have limiters but they are east to get at (and hence easy to "bump into" and reset) but if you convert to a hand controller you probably already have that covered.

One other option you might consider: Maybe get a small light duty one man hand steered electric pallet lift like they use in warehouses? Might be narrow enough for your needs. It kind of looks like a two-forked car floor jack with an attitude but it's motorized for both moving and lifting while you steer with the handle. This could not only allow you to move the scope, but most have about 8 to 12 inches of vertical lift built in so you can raise and lower the whole telescope with a flip of a switch. Just mount a good sturdy base between the arms where the pallet would be and setup the mount/OTA to that. Of course the rollers might not work on grass, etc. But I bet you could find one at a reasonable price if you looked around on the net at industrial supply places.

My $0.02 - TM

>> But I alas, am not a sculpture of wood and glass and metal. But I am a lover of fine workmanship. <<

That's what is known as being a "Patron" - and historically patrons of any art or science have paid through the nose for their vices .... but they also keep artisans employed who otherwise would never survive in the crass commercial world.

Alvin Clark and Sons would have starved if they had to make a go making the kind of refractors they did on what the market dictated. Fortunally for all of us they had a few very rich friends who like "perfection" also.

And my $0.02 would not have counted for very much! - TM

Looks good!

I take the "minimalist" approach to my SCT, however. I have a nylon plastic 1 1/2 inch black bag strap I stole from one of my wife's old carrie bags (like what you see on many back packs). It has a nice large plastic hook on one end (to go over a large ring on the bag for quick disconnectine) and I've rigged up a small diameter bungee cord on the other end that slips into the hook after I've wrapped the strap around the SCT OTA. I have the strap set up so it can hold one or two soft 5 lb "jogging weights" almost anywhere snug against the OTA w/o scratching it. Just slip it around and up and down until the whole thing comes into balance. It works great, and comes right off and stores in a pocket on my OTA bag when I'm done observing. No holes or screws needed and store nice and small (and it's soft - no banging or ripping holes in things while trasporting like a solid weight can do).

But does not look as nice (unless you happen to like the "black nylon/soft-weights and bungee cord" look).

TM

Good question - two other things to think about – the exit pupil for your finder(s) and getting the maximum field of view. Both make a huge difference in how easy the finder is to use. (And in my mind a RA finder is a must from the get-go anyway!)

The Exit Pupil of our eyes is the maximum opening the iris will go to when completely dark adapted. For each finder objective size there is a “minimum low power” (and associated size of the field of view) and if you go lower than the suggested minimum you may get wider fields but you will not use all the light transmitted through the finder. This is because the cone of light coming out the eyepiece will spill over onto you iris and does not all go into your eye.

A young person has an EP of about 5 to 9mm but our exit pupils shrink as we get older (the iris of our eyes tend to not open as far as we age) so an old guy like me (50-ish) may only have an EP of 5mm. (Actually, my eye doctor said it was 5.6mm max a few weeks ago so I happen to know).

You get the exit pupil of the finder (size of the cone of light comming out the eyepeice) by dividing the objective size by the power. Thus a 7X50 (50mm objective at 7 power) has a EP of close to 7.1mm and a 9X50 would have an EP of 5.5mm (etc.).

Generally speaking keeping the EP about 5mm is best in light polluted suburbia as it’s a compromise between age and the fact we may never actually get our eyes completely dark adapted (pupil size at the maximum) in our own backyards.

Using the 5mm EP example the 35mm finder would be best at 7 power, the 28mm at 5.6 power (etc.)

I use a very light home made 4X25 right angle on my short tube 80 (6mm exit pupil) and find it’s a good trade off between weight/bulk and seeing fainter stars and wide fields (18 deg.). I can see about 3 mag. “deeper” than with a 1X reflex (red-dot) finder while the finder does not weight a lot more than the “red-dot”. On my 8 inch SCT I use a correct image right angle 8X50 (I modified the stock Meade finder with a 45 deg. correct image diagonal) and that gives me a 6.5mm exit pupil at about 7 degrees FOV. Both of these finders were "messed around with" until I liked what I saw (but as always, your milage may differ ... )

FWIW - TM

I was waiting for Synta to do this - the handwriting was all over the wall for a long time!! And I will probably sell off a few items to get one.

Boy, now we can flame about BOTH the "Acro-vs-APO" and "cheap off-shore junk-scopes vs, high end stuff" topics all at the same time! Should be "Verly-intereesting"!

My asbestos undies are on all ready ... let the flames leap!

TM

We have several 1/2 inch thick Teflon cutting boards at home (but my wife won't let me have them ;-O) Maybe you could try a larger kitchen supply place and see what they have.

Also, some of the flexible white "dry-ease marker" sheets are made of a Teflon-like material (and are nice and thin, too).

FWIW - TM

Ricardo,

There are two possibilities here:

First, I'd find out if Astronomics is in trouble business wise. Maybe otheres here on AM can comment about this. They may be going into chapter 11 or even just quietly shutting down the business for what ever reason and canceling orders due to lack of funds. If that is the case you may really be out of luck as the only recourse is getting a Lawyer here in the US to try to recoup some of your money, but the legal fees charged would probably make this not worth the effort involved.

The second is Meade or Astronomics messed up and it's just a matter of correcting the mistake. If you habe a record of the money sent to Astronomics they should be happy to set things right.

Good luck!!

TM