Its been a good few days. Fixed my meade electronic focuser, and also fixed the standard focuser!
Since getting my Meade, I always had a suspicion that something was not quite right with its operation. Huge mirror flop, and a tendency to focus creep - often dramatically.
I was so depressed with it that I decided to take it apart to see if I could at least fix the focus creep. Turns out that the focus knob was not screwed down correctly. This unfortunately ment that the grub screws had done some damage to the focuser thread
I took the entire focus mechanism apart (making sure the tube was tilted upward to prevent the mirror from sliding down too far) and used a file to repair the thread.
Hey presto! I re-assembled the focuser, and screwed the focuser knob back down, this time ALL the way.
I tested my new supped up focus setup, and wow, what can I say? Awesome improvement! The JMI allows very fine control. Its going to make planetary focusing a real joy, thats for sure. More satisfying was that there is no mirror creep. Still a bit of mirror flop, but thats part of the SCT experience
