Thanks for the advice everyone, I much appreciate it! :-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
Humm...its not so bad..looks like mine 
Seriously, it should scrub up fine. |
Hopefully yours is in better condition, this one won't even rotate freely, hopefully just due to the large accumulation of wasp nests between the dome and the lip it rotates on.
I'm honestly not too fussed on cosmetics, I'm mostly interested in ensuring its longevity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by g__day
Strongly suggest you buy about 8 bottles of the spray on Exit Mould and a oodles of chuck wipes and a set of leather gardening gloves - works brilliantly for removing mould. I was gifted a dome that was covered in mould and gunk and about four hours work with hot water and that much exit mould fixed things brilliantly!
Secondly - the Max Dome kit works really well - suggest you will get most value from a backyard observatory with just the dome rotation kit (vs the slit open and close - which needs a new dome slit and motor. There is a long wait time on these kits and the instructions aren't well printed - so it worth while seeing one in operation and getting advise from someone who has retro fitted on recently - glad to give more feedback if that helps - did mine last year.
Next if your mount's rotation point isn't directly under the dome's rotation point - the East West offset parameter should have its sign (+/-) swapped for our hemisphere - the documentation is definitely wrong for our hemisphere.
Lastly the Mad Dome rotation software hub - the free version didn't work reliably - whereas the one build into MaximDl v5 worked fine - you need to plan what software will drive your Max Dome kit.
Once it all works well - and it eventually will - it gives you a great feeling of accomplishment - especially if your remote control everything from your house where its nice and warm!
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Thanks Matthew! I'm essentially planning on treating this as a remote obs, so I'll be wanting both shutter and rotation control. My wife is complaining about barely seeing me due to me always being up fiddling with my gear so I'm going to try and automate everything and get comms between the obs and the house (~350m away) so I can tinker with guiding etc from the living room.
I've contacted Sirius for a quote on the automation kit. Any idea how long the lead time is? They haven't mentioned that so far. Hopefully not too long, but then it'll be a while before I can get the deck/pad put in and this thing cleaned up and relocated anyway.