Posts Made By: Jeff Blazey

You are in my prayers. I'm sorry for your loss. Take good care of yourself.

Jeff

Yup due out around Thanks Giving, with Harrison Ford as Col Graff. I'm interested in seeing how Ford does "a bit dumpy and unkept" Graff.

Looking forward to it.

Jeff

One of the main reasons there is this drama going on with Iran (and who knows who else later)is that the present nuclear fuel cycle requires the removal of uranium and plutonium in highly concentrated and pure form in order to recycle the fuel rods. It's an intrinsic part of the fuel cycle. And no one wants the spent fuel rods transported across thousand of miles through or over their country for recycling by a third party. Shoot, if I were Iran, I'd balk at that too as I could be held hostage to disruptions in the processing in another country.

The metallic fuel cycle however, has no such requirements. It uses a pyro process to reconstitute the fuel without separating out the uranium and plutonium in highly purified forms. AND it can be done on site. It's almost impossible to cheat as it would require very elaborate and specific facilities to remove the fissile material and concentrate it, thus making it obvious what you're up to.

OBTW, it's also physically impossible to melt the core due to the dynamics of the nuclear reaction and fuel rods if coolant is cut off. It's modular too and is the elephant in the room for a completely green power source.

The technology was in an advanced state of development and demonstration in the eighties before the chickens in the Clinton administration caved to the nuclear-phobes and canceled it and the dimwitted Republicans made no effort to revive it when they could have.

Fortunately, the commercial nuclear industry (US, Russia and China) has been slowly and quietly bringing it along and is now ready to get it certified for commercial use.

So why haven't our brilliant "leaders" ever offered this option up to Iran? Hell go into partnership with them to commercialize the process and proliferate it.

If they say "NO" well then there you have it.

Jeff

For the last few months, I've not been getting messages from members who are responding to my ads. I've had to put a note in my recent ads to contact me via the private message system. When I look at my account menu, I see people have responded but no notifications are being forwarded to me via e-mail. I check my spam folder and there is nothing. I've checked my profile and settings and everything looks fine. Any ideas what's going on, a setting perhaps?

Jeff Blazey

Hi. My first posting on Astromart.

My MN55 works just fine on my old super polaris mount. These go for ~$200-300 sans motor. Add another $100 or so for the motor.

By the way the MN56 is a VERY nice scope.

Cheers.

Jeff

8)

Hey Darrell. I picked up an early generation AR5 with the plastic dew shield and no collimation capability. Well I'm just tickled with the performance. Optics are slightly undercorrected but quite sharp visually. Collimation was spot on. Yes there is secondary color at high power, especially the moon and planets, but with good seeing the sharp images will dominate your viewing experience.

It's a steal for the money. A whole scope, of good quality for less than the price of a fancy focuser or eyepiece. Can't ask for more than that!

By the way I picked up something called a Chromacor last month. This corrects the color of the scope and has the capability of also correcting an under or over corrected objective lens (but it has to match the lens...one size does not fit all). The darn thing works! Unfortunately it costs more than the whole scope. If you get seriously bitten by the bug, it may something worth persuing later.

Cheers

Jeff

Roland is absolutely right here. A filter is just that a filter. Like my other money pit hobby, high end audio, the presentation may actually be more pleasing to the ear (eye) if you can throw out an offending colorization. However, you are still throwing out information from the signal and overall resolution is reduced though some areas may experience higher contrast as the coloration is reduced.

The only corrector I know of is the Chromacor. And the darn thing works!

But there may be another. I've a really old AP 2" barlow. Using it ahead of the diagonal on my newly acquired AP 5" F6 (1986 vintage)actually seems to improve the color correction a bit.

Roland is that true or is some other factor at work here?

Jeff (an early adopter of your stuff).

8)

Doug:

I love my TEC 8/15.5. Cooling is not that much of an issue with the internal fan but it does take about an extra 1/2 hour or so over my TEC6. It's that surface to volume ratio thing. My GM-8 can actually handle it but the G-11 is the way to really go.

They seem to go for about $3400-3800 on the Mart. Which means you can buy NINE (!) of them for the price of the recent AP10.

TEC did make some bigger ones but they seem to be just as rare and shy about showing themselves as the APs.

Having said that, what I would REALLY like to see Roland make is a some nice, light weight, F6, Mak-Newts....now that would be nice.

Thanks for the ad copy Bill and I'll let everybody know how this shakes out.

Jeff

Here's another image.

Jeff