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16" Telekit
Well it has been 13 months since l started the telekit build and it has finally come to a end.
I ordered the Telekit in Jan 14 from Astrosystems. It arrived in late May 14. As luck would have it, my first born was due early May so the Telekit was put on the backburner whilst l figured out what l was doing with a baby.
It was a slow process building the Telekit. I work away so the time i had was already consumed with the little one and also trying to maintain some kind of order through the house and garden. We moved house too which made life a bit harder. How much crap a 9 month old has is beyond me.
The build manual was posted to me about 2 weeks after l ordered the kit. This allowed me to get familiar with the whole process. I had never really done much with woodwork ever, but the manual is very precise, it is hard to make mistakes.
Randy Cunningham from Astrosystems was very helpfull during the build process. I ordered a few bits and peices after the Telekit arrived and they got lost in the mail. Randy did not hesitate to replace and resend them. That is great customer service. I cant speak highly of the company. It has been a easy flow from start to finish. Well done Astrosystems.
The mirror im using is and 16" F4.5 from my meade lightbridge. Its a cheap chinese mirror but does throw out a good image once properly collimated and cooled. The secondary is a Antares 1/15 wave. This mirror cleaned up the image ten fold compared to the lightbridge secondary. The colours in Jupiter are a lot more vibrant.
The focuser is a feather touch with a telrad up top on the UTA as well. I have a Thousand Oaks dew controller which is mounted on the UTA as well. Since the dew controller has a unmodulated outlet l can run the DG-2 dew heater off it. I wasnt quite happy with a 9v battery hanging off the spider. The Argo Navis is mounted using the stalk provided by Astrosysems. I have left room for a servocat one day..........
The build has been a learning curve for myself. Not only in woodworking but in understanding how a scope works. All aspects of electrical work and little parts that are customised all lead to a better understanding of ATM.
The end result is that l love my Telekit. It towers above the lightbridge that l had, which was customised to an extent. The fellows like Barry Bowman (sn1987a) show what can be actually done with a lightbridge. Those with a lightbridge give Barry a look up, you will be amazed what you can do.
Cheers Curt
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