Quote:
Originally Posted by erick
Hi Shawn
I replaced the crosshairs in my GSO Finderscope - see here
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=20812
Photo shows new crosshairs in place. Original were fine copper wire which was easily displaced (minimum glue in the factory??) I used slightly thicker copper wire out of the earth wire in some low amp (8?) mains cable.
Here's a bit more detail on what I did:-
"Re crosshairs. I used a sharp knife to remove the previous crosshairs and glue from the four notches. I then had some copper wire from a piece of electricity mains cable which was a little thicker than the original, but seemed OK - still very flexible. I held the wire across the two opposing notches with thumb on one side and fingers of the other, held down tightly against the tabletop. I tried to stretch it taut. Then I added a small wipe of "superglue" to each notch, then held firm for several minutes. On releasing, it had taken. I repeated with the other crosshair. Then I left to set for a few hours, then cut off the excess wire with edge cutters. I used the point of my knife blade to push the little hangover into the thread - in the correct direction so it trailed as the crosshair ferrule was screwed into place. As it turns out, I've had it off and on several times since, but the crosshairs have remained firmly in place and taut."
In the photo, you can see the white colour where the superglue outgassed onto the surrounding plastic in the ferrule. I hope it has stopped now I've rebuilt the scope. But this is a basic Finderscope, doing nothing special - so some crap on the lenses doesn't worry me much - but nothing seen for some days. The slightly thicker crosshairs are an advantage to me since the previous ones were difficult to see under dark skies. I'm still working on "illuminating" the crosshairs so I can see them better in the absolute dark. I've got a great set of red LEDS, fully variable illumination- but still not providing enough light - I have some more ideas to try before I start drilling into the FinderScope body or eyepiece body but I'll do that if I have to!   |
I put a red led in the hood, that you can set to flash at predetermined interval via the illum reticle support and h/box, this causes the crosshairs two be sillouhetted against the star background breifly every couple of seconds,,works OK too...