Woot! The scope arrived yesterday afternoon, but I stayed at work until "normal" home time. With a pair of big boxes [photo 1,2] sitting behind me a number of people were prompted to come ask questions.
I was surprised to find a few had telescopes at home as well.
The OTA box had some serious damage with bits and pieces dinged, torn or missing [photo 3]. Whilst the OTA tube and primary mirror survived unscathed, the spider vanes were bent awfully [photo 4] due to the weight of the secondary mirror assembly dragging them down after a (really heavy) knock. The vanes were even bent "around the bend" where they attach to the secondary mirror assembly with rivets. After pulling the whole assembly out and spending a while trying to straighten them (they're really soft metal, almost like aluminium) I refit it all and did manage to collimate it OK. Haven't done a star test yet, though (I am reading up on how to do that this morning).
I spent a few hours last night looking at the limited field of view from my unit's balcony and surprising myself with the number of double stars I hadn't noticed before. My Telrad almost instantly found a second home at the business end, too [photo 5]. I'm glad I bought a second base for it when I purchased it!
I'm eagerly awaiting this Saturday night when I head up to
Mount Kent Observatory near Toowoomba for the
AAQ field night!
If anyone's interested, I also took a bunch of pictures as I was unpacking and scanned the double-sided instruction sheet as well.
Have fun, everyone!