Well that's what I thought (hooray!!). When my Direct Drive Mount turned up at customs on tuesday afternoon. I high tailed it down to customs on wednesday morning filled out the necessary paper work, what a rigmarole. I was there for 2 hours. Finally cleared it with customs. Paid the relevent fees and when I got back to my van the damn thing wouldn't start. I was scratching my head as to why, since I had no problems that morning with it. And since the time was escaping from me because I still had to go down to the warehouse where they were holding it (the mount) I had to get going. To make matters worse I realised that I will need to call the RACV, and since I wasn't with the RACV I had to join for 2 years in advance before they will send someone down to help. Anyway a lazy(not)! $230 later and about 20 mins he arrives. Looks over the vehicle and in drivers area and declares I see your problem you left your lights on. Whaaat!! I said how the hell did I do that!!?. Then it dawned on me I turned my lights on travelling through the Domain tunnel and forgot to turn them off DOH!!(in the words of the great man himself Homer Simpson). With that out the way I made a beeline to the the warehouse. I reckon I waited nearly 15 mins for the lights to the feeway to change green and I was getting pretty impatient at this stage. Finally making it to the warehouse in Keilor Park I picked up the mount weighing in @ just a smidge under 40kg I finally got this beauty back. The ASA DDM60 cost me 3 1/2 months in waiting time and if you'll excuse the expression, an astronomical amount in funds
. Now this mount wouldn't be complete without two more crucial pieces of hardware a high quality tripod which I purchased much later and with extensive research on the net. A Berlebach Sky which Berlebach actually supply the correct mounting holes for the mount. In dropdown list box they have an extensive number of mounts they cater for for several types of tripods, well worth having a look at. However I have a funny story about what happened to myself with berlebach but that can wait for another day. the other piece of hardware is the ever so important optical instrument. This I purchased through Chris Ellis from Astronomy Alive an Officina Stellare, a highly corrected 130mm apochromatic fluorite triplet refractor. These telescopes and any I mean any from Officina Stellare are the state of the art optics professional observatory standards not cheap either but well worth the money. Anyway with these three instruments in my possession I eagerly wanted to put them together and get the scope up and running. However trust Murphy to rear his ugly head again nothing went to plan. because of the short body of the Officina Stellare the dovetail plate and quick release mounting brackets didn't quite gell. The maximum distance the rings could be place on the body of the scope was 185mm the min distance of the plate was 200mm and no holes were pre drilled at that distance. So I had to do a MacGuyver and improvise. So I made amake shift bracket on the bracket and placed a W/O dovetail on top of that bracket which fixed the problem although I can't slide the scope or the dovetail back or forth to balance in dec. My next challenge was the balance in RA the scope. Although only 9.5 k's it was still too heavy for the counter weights and shaft combination. ASA only provided me with 2x2.6kg weights and a 295mm shaft not enough weight and too short a shaft to gain leverage over the scope for proper balance. However Chris is taking care of that as I write this longwinded self indulgent trumpet blowing waffle
,Which I hope any of who read this thread find it informative and slightly amusing at the same time
I'm hoping to have pics of the rig for you folks shortly in it's full glory and the images of deep space this baby will be able take
Cheers
Dave
Hooray! The ASA DDM60 has finally arrived
