crashtestdummy

ive always said from the beginning that I have plenty of time to get it finished and getting the back flat is reallt important to getting a good overall finished mirror.

hope you will eventually get the motivation back to finish that 12" mirror as it will be good practice at rescuing a blank.

cheers for the comments guys.should have a little update over the next few days but not had time due to buy a new car to replace my broken down one and then having more problems with the new one!!grrrrr

Life has taught me one thing fella, you cant take it with you so spend it and enjoy your life.

My ep case of 4 eyepieces, a paracorr, 2x barlow and two filters is an easy way to spend just over £2k and thats just average these days.

Hi,thanks for the kind comments and support.the blank is about 43mm thick and doesnt have a pregenerated curve as i wanted to do it all.im.planning it to be f3.6 as i dont want to have to use anything above a small step and im only 5'7" and on tiptoes at zenith on my 16" lightbridge!!

not used either of the ones you have said but there are a fair few comments on the 400p if you do a search.the orion for me is way overpriced as you could get a 16" manual dob and add the goto function to it for less.i have a 16" lightbridge,not really tested it much but its promising so far but they require a few mods to make them work perfectly.the lightbridge build quality isnt as good as my skywatcher 300p was!!!the 400p by all accounts dwarfs my 16" lightbridge which is itself huge

have had a few tries for all the cassiopeia clusters but the first night ended up with patchy clouds with a minute window eaither side of cloud then the next time a full moon with clouds.have got half a dozen of them but my herschel guide shows about 25 clusters arround the "w" so may wait while she is higher in the sky later in the yer and try and get a few more