Ben Ritchie

After care from Dr Elliott has been nothing short of incredible. The poor soul has been bombarded with my e-mails and always promptly and politely responds with clear instructions and explanations. I wish every astronomer vendor was like this! He clearly knows his stuff and is happy to share his experience and skills with others.

He taught me spectroscopy when I was an Astronomy undergraduate, and was a terrific teacher. Nice to see he has kept busy

On 27/08/2018 at 12:02, RayD said:

I would say that SW probably intend for this to be use with 2" eyepieces, especially at low powers, and is why it is only supplied with a 2" thumbscrew adaptor on the draw tube (this is only an assumption). 

Low-power browsing with a 2" eyepiece should be a natural use-case for it, but there are some slight frustrations - it's very focuser-heavy and hard to balance with a 2" diagonal and a heavy 2" eyepiece, as the short dovetail doesn't give much room for adjustment.

I find mine a bit easier with a lighter max-FoV 1.25" eyepiece (I have a 24mm Meade SWA, but a 24mm Panoptic would be great too), and that seems to be a good combination and gives wide fields with less weight. Haven't had time or clear-enough skies to really test mine out properly - only arrived from FLO a couple of weeks ago, and life's been busy! - but first signs have been pretty positive, and i'm pleased with the purchase. 

Thumbs up for Rupert at astrograph.net from me. Very quick and helpful exchange of emails when I was looking for an alt-az mount, and two orders were received very rapidly.

I read Hawking's brief history of time when it was first published (I must have been 13 or 14) and got interested in astronomy and cosmology at that point - my grandfather knew Patrick Moore from the BBC and I went to chat with him a couple of times, although he told me to concentrate on Physics and Mathematics rather than bother with observing (!!). Suppose that's not bad advice for cosmology really, and I ended up with a PhD in it, although I remember him saying he thought that an engineering degree and working in spacecraft engineering would be more sensible, don't think he saw a lot of use in cosmology at that time.

I got into backyard astronomy via photography in the early 1990s, although I didn't have a 'scope at the time - just a Canon SLR, a few fixed lenses, and 35mm film (good old Kodak Tech Pan). It was a bit of a battle, but I must have been reasonably proficient by the time Hyakutake turned up (1996?) as I got some pretty good results for that. Didn't own a telescope until I got a Meade ETX sometime around 2001.

Talking about capture software, tried Sharpcap but it just crashes for me when I select the flashed webcam (Netbook running XP), but Craterlet works ok. Anyone else having issues with Sharpcap?

Big thanks to Robin for diagnosing this - rogue .dll left over from a now-departed DMK21. All working now

On a different note, i'm wondering if it's worth sending one of mine off to Astronomiser for the long-exposure mod. I'm particularly ham-fisted when it comes to soldering anything, so don't think i'd be able to DIY. Not planning on long-exposure imaging as such, but a CCD capable of integrations of a few seconds is a useful thing to have around.

Hi Robin, thanks for that - it's at home and i'm at work, so will do that later. I have 1.0.11, and just get the Windows "application crashed, do you want to send information to Microsoft" box come up.

I'm wondering if maybe it's because my Netbook has a built-in webcam too. If I select that, then Sharpcap works fine - but is taking pictures of me at the keyboard . it's only when I switch to the flashed SPC900NC that it crashes. If I don't click ok/cancel (or whatever the options are on the 'report to microsoft' box, I forget) then some activity continues in the Sharpcap window.

Proper problem report to come later.

Talking about capture software, tried Sharpcap but it just crashes for me when I select the flashed webcam (Netbook running XP), but Craterlet works ok. Anyone else having issues with Sharpcap?

Just want to say that the adapters from Wayne are first class. The screw in dust cap is awesome, have that screwed into the filter. Nice work Wayne!

+1 - was impressed with mine too.

Mine arrived today too, ordered Sunday

Sorry to hear about the failure

As I am not at a electronicly minded, if the worst comes to the worst, can Meade Scopes be looked at and repaired this side of the Atlantic or do they have to go back to the factory in California.

Steve Collingwood at Telescope House is the man to talk to.

Last week I ordered a Skywatcher 250P DS OTA from FLO - arrived next day, of course, but i'd spent too much time worrying about how the mount would cope with it and not enough time on the practicalities of using it in my (small) observatory. To cut a long story short, it didn't fit.

Anyway, FLO have been brilliant about sorting out an exchange so thanks, all - customer service is hard enough without your customer being an idiot!

I got an online quote of £96 for up to £6000 worth of kit which seemed pretty good to me

My home AND contents cover is £194 per year and covers all my kit - even my AP refractor is within the cover, i've checked - so £96 for just Astronomy kit seems quite expensive to me.

In general, my understanding is that the 'specialist insurers' are, in general, not cheap, and quite often don't provide anything you can't get from your home contents insurance. Always check the small-print, of course!