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Mick,
I've been building telescopes since 1960.....
Everything from a 2" refractor to an 18" f5... In 1975 I built the Canopus 320, a 12 1/2" f5 on a heavy fork mount. This was my workhorse for many years. I did primarily visual (contributed to the Thompson&Bryant's Supernovae Charts)
I sold it to Peter Nelson in the early eighties and became involved with the AP section of the ASV - was director for many years.....
After moving around the world (a few times!) I ended up with a Meade 12" LX200 - HD cut-down tripod/ re-built wedge. This was at the serious start of my spectroscopy (I had built my first spectroscope back in 1990's) I soon became "hooked". I designed and built the Spectra-L200 spectroscope as a kit for amateurs. A few hundred have been sold around the world.
The size of the spectroscope was too large for the Meade forks - cutting out significant areas of the sky. I looked at removing the OTA and re-mounting it on a EQ mount, but the overall weight was tooo much.
Made the decision to sell the 12" LX200 and initially went for a C9.25 (The BEST SCT I've ever had!) then a HEQ5...all this was later upgraded to the current C11 on the NEQ6.
I've written three books on spectroscopy and currently have almost 1000 members on the Astronomical Spectroscopy Yahoo group.
Currently involved with the design and construction of spectroheliographs for solar imaging.
Sorry to bore you......but you did ask!!
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