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DIY refractor.
The Surplus Shed is to blame. They dangled this 127mm achromat in front of me and I was gone. So it's their fault. One thing led to another and it wasd then Andrews' fault for having a decent 11:1 focuser by Long Perng. But the result has been a 5" short-focus widefield refractor. FL is 700 so it works out at about 5.5.
The objective from Surplus Shed came in a ruddy great cage that I retained and the scope was largely built around it. The dust-cap in the picture below is actually about 50% optical tube since the objective actually sits about half-way along its length.
The engineering challenges have been in fashioning an accurate leams of scaling down from 150.. aluminium pip to 80mm and then down again to accommodate the focuser. That being overcome, the remaining task was painting and voila, we have a telescope. The dovetail bar underneath is fastened to the tube in 3 places and is very rigid.
I can't wait to get some light into this baby.
Photos to follow.
Peter
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