sejanus
19-10-2007, 10:10 AM
thought I'd post a bit here for anyone considering one.
The scope moves very freely and smoothly, albeit a bit noisily. You can literally move it with a finger, which is good for the wife as she's keen to use it.
It's actually not as hard to move around as i thought it would be - you just lift it out by the truss poles and whilst it's heavy, it's manageable to move it short distances. I wouldnt want to carry it down stairs though.
As indicated on a previous thread the focuser was a bit temperemental but with the tips in there I have it working reasonably now, though it's still a bit "loose"
Collimating it never really worked. I've never had a prob collimating my previous scopes, but for the life of me I can't get the laser pointer to hit the center of the mirror. It's about 2-3cm off. Will have a further look today
Even not collimated, the detail on the moon was pretty darn cool. Better than I've seen before.
I then tried to put the argo navis on it but just wasn't sure of a couple of steps and so held off until today to email gary.
So then I tried some sight seeing. Orion was very low in the horizon, and looked about the same as old C11 used to when it was right overhead. I'm afraid I was a bit too tired to wait until 3am for it to rise to a decent height.
I then decided to put the telrad on as I was having problems finding stuff with the 1800 odd mm focal length. This is where I got a bit annoyed - just with a 2" eyepiece, and the telrad - the scope is now unbalanced and top heavy. if you don't hold it, it just goes down all the way to it's lowest point :mad2:
So apparently meade only want you to use very light eyepieces, and their included garbage red dot finder
So I guess I need to figure out a way to put some weights on the base of the scope to balance it better. I went to bed deciding to look at it in morning and maybe go to hardware store.
So basically ;
good points ;
- optics seem promising despite dodgy collimation
- very smooth effortless moving of scope
bad points
- needs some home brew mods to make it usable long term
and the obligatory piccy ;
http://www.gavincato.com/tmp/lb16.jpg
The scope moves very freely and smoothly, albeit a bit noisily. You can literally move it with a finger, which is good for the wife as she's keen to use it.
It's actually not as hard to move around as i thought it would be - you just lift it out by the truss poles and whilst it's heavy, it's manageable to move it short distances. I wouldnt want to carry it down stairs though.
As indicated on a previous thread the focuser was a bit temperemental but with the tips in there I have it working reasonably now, though it's still a bit "loose"
Collimating it never really worked. I've never had a prob collimating my previous scopes, but for the life of me I can't get the laser pointer to hit the center of the mirror. It's about 2-3cm off. Will have a further look today
Even not collimated, the detail on the moon was pretty darn cool. Better than I've seen before.
I then tried to put the argo navis on it but just wasn't sure of a couple of steps and so held off until today to email gary.
So then I tried some sight seeing. Orion was very low in the horizon, and looked about the same as old C11 used to when it was right overhead. I'm afraid I was a bit too tired to wait until 3am for it to rise to a decent height.
I then decided to put the telrad on as I was having problems finding stuff with the 1800 odd mm focal length. This is where I got a bit annoyed - just with a 2" eyepiece, and the telrad - the scope is now unbalanced and top heavy. if you don't hold it, it just goes down all the way to it's lowest point :mad2:
So apparently meade only want you to use very light eyepieces, and their included garbage red dot finder
So I guess I need to figure out a way to put some weights on the base of the scope to balance it better. I went to bed deciding to look at it in morning and maybe go to hardware store.
So basically ;
good points ;
- optics seem promising despite dodgy collimation
- very smooth effortless moving of scope
bad points
- needs some home brew mods to make it usable long term
and the obligatory piccy ;
http://www.gavincato.com/tmp/lb16.jpg