Well I had just finished work
and was heading home along the main road (a 10 minute drive at 7am) with no thoughts other then getting a few hours of comfortable, air-conditioned sleep
when my attention was drawn by a large, bright fluoro-orange sign on the back of a parked car.
As I drove past my head turned in one smooth movement
to first read the sign - "Garage Sale" - and then secondly to get a
very quick glimpse down the full length of their driveway (speed limit along here
is 70 k's ) through the gate of their 6 foot fence.
My brain somehow registered something familiar - not sure what - but a little voice deep inside insisted that I do a loop around the block and go past again slowly for another look.
I resisted the impulse for a few seconds (I really was pretty tired at this point) but I know how my sub-conscious works when something's bugging me, and there's no way it was going to let me rest until I investigated "whatever the heck it was" that registered on my psyche.
Better to do go back and look now than to have to drive back later when I find I can't sleep. So I turned off, did the loop around the block, and this time stopped directly in front of their driveway. Looking down the side of the house I could see amongst the usual garage sale stuff a beautiful metallic-blue reflector on an EQ mount / tripod!
I had the car parked and was waltzing in about 20 seconds later, trying to look dead casual
but making a beeline towards the scope. I'm not in the market currently for a scope like this (actually I could have been, but with car rego and 2 new tyres on the agenda at present it wasn't happening), but I know my brother Don would be pleased to get his hands on something very much like this! (He's currrently using a 65mm "Mini-Mak" scope, so this is a definite upgrade!)
What I found was a 4 / 4.5" x 900mm (long tube!) OTA mounted on what I believe is an EQ3 class of mount. I'm not up on EQ mounts, have never owned one, but this seemed somewhat sturdier than the cheapies I've seen at Dock Smith and so on. There was no visible brand on the scope or mount, anywhere, and although obviously not expensive gear it all looked good for a Chinese make. (I later found it had clearish smooth grease everywhere, not the typical black clag for instance.)
Now when I say the OTA was metallic blue think "Kingfisher Blue" or another similar, attention-grabbing V-8 metal flake colour from your favourite 70's muscle car. Looks brilliant in the sunlight, but of course will be invisible under a moonless sky.
(I have taken pics, but the camera's at home and I'm at work again so I'll post something when I can)
Anyway .... the owner came over, we had a chat, I did some "tyre kicking" and then tried to ring Don at home - no answer. Drove home (all of 5 minutes away), found Don up early and out in the back yard, told him about scope, we went back, more tyre kicking, etc.
I took my laser collimator along, we found the collimation was definitely out of whack and showed the owner how the laser dot on the primary was sitting about 1/2 way out to the edge from centre (but presumably "salvageable with some hard work on our part").
I also made a point of mentioning how this unit probably has a spherical mirror not a parabolic, of how it had a sealed rear end, ie no readily accessible primary adjustment screws, etc. We didn't want to seem too keen after all!
After a suitably lenghty inspection period haggling ensued, a price was agreed, everyone walked away feeling like a winner.
Don has a new EQ mounted reflector that looks a million bucks 4 or 4.5" (still haven't measured it properly) x 900mm fl. It came with 30mm, 10mm & 6mm Super Plossls that look & perform pretty similar to my GSO plossl's, a good quality moon filter (better than mine
), 2x barlow, front end cap with the "capped" smaller aperture plus (a real bonus surprise here!) an almost invisible primary-end cap that comes away to reveal 3 well designed, finger-adjustable collimating screws!!
Needless to say by 8am we had this scope fairly well collimated and raring to go! Quick daytime test on the half moon looked good.
Although the sky was immaculately clear and cloudless at 3pm - yep, you guessed it - it was mostly clouded out by 7pm, so no first light report yet.
So .... the moral of the story, always listen to your intuition, follow up on hunches, and never be too tired to spot a bargain bit of astro gear.
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Oh yeah, the price - we got the lot for $120.
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