Okay , well with all this talk about SCA collimators, as lovely as it is I simply couldn't justify spending all that money. I had a look at the Youtube video link that SteveL posted regarding it and well something akin to a penny dropped.

As some of you will remember, I made a right dog's dinner of collimating my Cape the last time I tried, using a laser :mad:, requiring me to go swanning off to North Wales in search of Peter Wise and ask him kindly to re-collimate my scope.

For obvious reasons I can't and have no wish to carry on this arrangement even if the company still existed and Peter was willing !! I began to do some reading around the subject and apart from our very own AstroBaby's site describing the collimating technique I found this one especially helpful, http://www.oarval.org/collimatE.htm

He somehow managed to describe it in a very simple staged way which just worked for me.

Now, owning a Cape is a bit like being "the only gay in the village" !! It's not quite a Newtonian more akin to a Schmidt Newtonian but having a flat optical plate as opposed to a corrector. Now when crud collects inside the OTA ...... and it does, it helps if you know can take off the front plate (holding the secondary) or the mirror cell and have the confidence to put it safely back together again.

Following Kielder last October and another very cold setion in Dec', I found lots of crud in the OTA courtesy of a brilliant plan I had to try and to try and dissipate the accumulated dew on the primary ( I told you it was very cold) by blowing warm air from a hair dryer into the focuser ( told you it was a brilliant plan-NOT!!!)

I also wanted to centrespot my primary mirror whilst it was out, to aid in collimating.

Being a bit short of brass I decided to make my own site tube from a length of tubing from an old vacuum cleaner and info from this site, http://web.telia.com/~u41105032/kolli/kolli.html

and a spare focuser blank with a 2mm hole drilled in the centre. ( I will also be making a laser collimator/cheshire Ooooooooher missus)

For me collimating is a HUGE step but it was made easier by the very fact I had to do it and would learn agreat deal from the experience. Having got my bits made I set to-

1) Centre the secondary with the site tube. This wasn't the nightmare I thought it would be, partly because I had the foresight to paint the bottommost rim of the tube white !! and set some X-hairs in there too !!

2) Once centred, move to the primary. Now this WAS a nightmare 'cos I was trying to get the centre spot aligned with the X-hairs !!!! UGH !!

It soon became apparent this just wasn't going to happen and then BLAM !! It hit me ! YOU GREAT DONKEY !!! You're supposed to line the white ring you can see (reflection) with the centrespot.

I have to be honest, once this had dawned on me, the whole process was done within a minute. I double ,triple, quadruple checked that everything now appeared centred and decided it was done !

Tonight I hope to do a quick star test-if it isn't too windy, but I feel like I have really achieved something this afternoon and feeling rather pleased with mesen.

Nothing to fear but fear itself !!

Collimating a scope , pah nowt to it when you know how !!:)