gooseholla

Tail light from some mad chevy?

Doctor told me I had to lose my pie physique Best be buying an 8" again

Mag 14.1... I prefer to comprehend what I'm looking at not detect faint smudges, which is obviously why I went for a sensible sized scope I jest of course! I'm starting to wish I had ordered a 24" mirror... John

Yeah some parts of the south are good but few and far between it seems! Wales would be a good place for sure. John

Not really refining it. As you may remember I had a new secondary made for me just before I went up to Yorkshire. First time I tried it I couldn't get it anywhere near in alignment. Did some tweaks and it kind of works. I need to move the spider part down the UTA a bit, so will probably order some more ali poles and do that some point soon, as it looks ridiculous having 60mm collimation bolts with only about 1mm of usable tweaking! Only other thing I have done is the handles. Was so fed up of bending down twisting knobs to get the handles on and off. Was a real grind so I came up with an idea, ran it past my engineer neighbour who confirmed it would work. Cut 2 slots in some handles, one on top one on bottom. This allows the handles to hook onto two bolts with large knob heads which are attached to the scope and a slight turn locks them. The beauty is, because of the way the slots are, when you lift, the back one is forced up and the front one down so it cannot fall off. Makes life so much easier! I looked over the scope and was shocked how shoddy my work was in places - but back then I didn't have skills. I can do so much more now - kind of makes me want to rebuild large parts of it . I also have an urge to strip it down to bare wood and stain it deep mahogany red. But I don't think I'll do that - maybe a long time in the future when the mirrors are away getting re-aluminised. Yeah be nice to get out into dark somewhere. So sad I missed SGL as well as a couple of observing sessions with the lads in Wales, but really wasn't feeling well for much of this winter. John

Hi Damian, Hope all is good. Lovely scope and hope you get some great views through it. Finally getting my scope back together - mirror has sat in shed since I went to yorkshire in November! Missed loads of astronomy this winter due to various reasons but can't wait to be viewing again. John

I haven't seen so much green and black since my dad's 1980s computer monitor loading a BIOS! Nice eyepieces. John