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Astro_Baby

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    Astronomy, Rocketry, Marxism and the invariable demise of capitalism, overthrowing tyranny, justice, truth and freedom from oppression, bringing comfort to the destitute, investing in dreams
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  1. Hi All, Hope your well. Just a quickie to say the site is backup. Domain expired but we didn’t get a notification and were blindsided. Apologies to all you collimators out there. www.astro-baby.com Mel
  2. Hi Astrobaby (Sorry, I don'y know your real name).

    Recently I followed your excellent HEQ5 strip down and service guide, thank you. It solved my problem of severe backlash in RA which started after my HEQ5 took a rather nasty fall. However, I have a new problem. The RA has become stiff, so much so that balancing is a pain. The axis does not swing free. I am not able to understand what I have done wrong. My friends online told me to loosen the "collar", but again, I am too daft to understand what collar they are referring to. I'd be very thankful if you could please advice what I may do to set the axis swinging free again.

     

    1. SteveBz

      SteveBz

      Hi Astro Sathya, Namaste, Did you get this fixed?  I imagine it was the collar under the Polar Finder.  On my CG5, I can unscrew the whole polar finder including lens, three collimating screws, two black collars and thread assembly revealing a collar held on by two grub screws.  This can be loosened.

    2. astrosathya

      astrosathya

      Hi Steve, I simply love your Namaste touch. :) 

      The problem was that the RA bearing, ( which sits between the RA worm wheel  and the taper bearing on the rear end of the axis) was broken internally owing to the fall. However, while reassembling the mount after the fall, two years ago, I had placed it back in its original position, all by sheer luck. But then, when I removed the same bearing for regreasing this season, I missed the original position and the dent in the bearing caused the axis to stiffen. I checked well and then purchased an SKF 6006 bearing and discarded the old one. Works well now. Haven't been able to field test it owing to Monsoon season here.

  3. Great review - I can only imagine the work and time that went into it. Mel
  4. N8Allen - I bet that scope and mount combo provides for a zero wobble viewing
  5. I like the look of it, its quite a sweety to look at and in its wooden fitted box its quite charming to get out occasionally and have a fiddle. I have two of them. One thats quite old and tatty and the one in the pics which, until I bought it a few years ago, had never been out of its factory wrapping. It was still wrapped in its greaseproof paper and the tripod had clearly never been used. Its kind of collectible, its got the full white light kit and its pretty much just that - a collectible. Optically its fine and its objective does give sharp enough views but a telescope is much more than an objective lens. The mount is horrible, the focuser worse. In its day it represented the best there was but almost any modern scope will run it off the road. Its no match for the TAL 100 either in its views or the ease of operation. I really only keep it so I can occasionally get it out the box and go brrrrrrrrr - horrid old telescope - mostly to annoy the rose tinted glasses folks Occasionally I toy with the idea of converting it to a solar scope as the lens is good but its an awful lot of cash and why bother when I could buy an off the shelf dedicated solar scope without all the headaches of conversion. If I could ever rouse myself I would get some rings to mount it onto my HEQ5 (the Unitron rings are uniquie and only mount to the Unitron mount) and add a .965/1.25 diagonal to give it a run on a modern mount but I never seem to get this up the priority list. Hey F15 - I am good, well as can be expected as I have had some health issues over the last few years. You see I was right not to sell you my Unitron you may have hated it and all your nostalgia would be destroyed You'd never get misty eyed again at a long focus frac
  6. A blast from the past...but believe me one look through this for nostalgia reasons will kill off that nostalgia for good. Tricky focuser, wobbly mount, hideous .965 eyepieces that look like the came out a christmas cracker. Amazing how far we have come since 1972 when this scope had its first light. On the upside it has a nice wooden box - probably because thats the best place for it Its a Unitron/Polarex 114 with its white light kit.
  7. I offered Synta an option to do a guide for the AZ EQ6 but they never responded. They asked for the rights to post the other guides but we couldn't come to an arrangement. I offered as part of that that if they would loan me an Alt Az EQ6 I would do a complete strip, rebuild and tune guide but never got a reply. Shame because in time it will become useful - altruistic as I am I am not inclined to buy a mount just to have the guide made available. Crazy really that for a few quid they wouldn't play ball but hey ho.
  8. The bearings that need replacing the most I have found is the small ones on the end of the worm roller shafts. The main bearings in most mounts I have worked with are as good as any. I would have to consult my notes to see which ones they were. Strangely I didn't put it on the guide so if anyone can say with certainty what types and quantities they are it would be good.
  9. Well the 130 comes , at least as far as I know, with a 10mm and 25mm eyepiecelus a Barlow, filters will be of little use on such a small scope though a moon filter is always handy. I dont know what quality the eyepieces are with the Celestron but the truth is neither scopes standard eyepieces are really anything that should sway the decision. Decent plossl types are relatively inexpensive anyway. I am being honest as I can here, having played with Celestron 130EQs because their owners were in tears was enough to make me curse the scope and even I found the collimation horrific on them to carry out. Witha ll the other headaches I would prefer to pay a bit more and buy the Skywatcher and just pay out for a few decent Plossls once you hakve had a bit of rime to decide what you want....get some eyetime in before you make a choice.
  10. But looking at your pic would suggest to me that collimation mayw ell be out asw ell, that wont affect focus but assuming that view is kind of centred the collimation is out.
  11. I'm with John....took the long way round and used a lot of cheap, mid priced and expensive EPs on the way to eyepiece Nirvana. I learnt a lot on the journey though so it was worth it and most of the kit was resold on at a decent price. I cut my stuff down to the point where it all fits in a single case which makes travel easier and also reduces the 'obsessive eyepiece swapping' disease when observing. If you only have one 10mm eyepiece you are less inclined to keep thinking 'wonder if the ortho will do better here, or maybe the plossl or maybe the TMB - I dont know I am not sure this Pentax is doing what its supposed to and it seems mushy - lets try the ortho again etc etc' I am now at stability and unless some amazing eyepiece came along which could see through cloud I doubt I'd change from what I have - contentment and peace at last
  12. If its any consolation at all I almost tore my hair out when doing collimation for the first time - years back all most of us had was a collimation cap and for the scopes back then with long focal lengths it was adequate. A cheshire tool makes life simpler (note most modern Cheshires are in fact combination sight and cheshire tools). Lasers in my opinion cause beginners more problems than they solve - its perfectly possible to get a good laser response when in fact the mirror are not aligned. Solid lasers like the Hotech or the Blug are a lot better in this regard but also a lot more expensive (I have never used a blug but some people who know about collimation swear they are the bomb). A handy tool to have with you as well is a short tube refractor collimator - they are useful for quick field collimation of the primary mirror and can also be useful on some large and fast reflectors as they give a wider view down the tube. Some combi/schesire tools have too long a sight tube which makes them cranky at times to use with modern fast reflectors. Half the problem with collimation, especially of the secondary, is the confusing reflections hence the paper stuffed down the tube. I am currently revising my own collimation guide to include alignment of the focuser to ensure its square. I originally quite intentionally left this out as it seemed to make the process even harder and more daunting for the beginner but quite a few people have asked me to include it. Writing a collimation guide is no easy task - if you make it too simple people get bad collimation, if you make it thorough people complain its complicated I tried to capture all of the major issues and cover them step at a time in a logical manner with drawings and pctures to help the beginner get a view of what things should look like. I would earnestly encourage anyone with time on their hands to write a guide of their own because a) you will learn stuff yourself and you may just make a guide thats useful to others - there can't be enough resources for this kind of thing. The funny thing with collimation is that once you have got your head round it you kind of wonder why it ever seemed so hard before. It is a very confusing thing as I am sure most of you would agree. If you want a really comprehensive guide that covers everything (but at the risk of your head exploding ) I can recommend Vic Menards 'New Perspectives on Newtonian Collimation' Jason Khadder who did the illustrations for that learned tome was kind enough to review my guide and peer review to make sure its all accurate as well as to graciously allow me to use some of his drawings/schematics. That reminds me I must get another copy - mine got lost in a recent move. Mel
  13. I had a 5" reflector back in the late 1970s that looked a little like Tascos 16T - it was super deluxe and even had a clock drive. Ok it was wind up and only ran for about 15 minutes but back then it was the bomb and VERY expensive. The clock drive had a teeny chime in it so when it was getting low on wind up power is would go 'ding-ding' to alert you to wind it back up No idea who the manufacturer was - I think it was marketed as 'Helios' but it came out of Japan it didn't have any manufacturers labels on it except at the back end it said something like 'Superiorr Japanese Astro Scope' and some Japanese markings, serial number etc and unfortunately I have no pictures of it at all now but it was probably the prettiest scope I ever owned. All white tube, black fittings and wooden legs. I daresay if I had one like it today I would probably be horrified at how mushy the views, how duff the focuser was and the constant 'ding-ding' from the chimes and having to wind it up every 10 minutes would drive me nuts but back then it was my pride and joy. Amazing what you can get these days - that old scope probably cost about what a car would have cost back then
  14. Jules, How do you know how tight to put the front retaining ring in and also the outer retaining screws. I have no reason to doubt my own scopes optics BUT I recall ading some time back about someone having their TAL 125 hand tuned by some whizz....any idea who that might be and or some source data on establishing the perfection of the set up ? Good job by the way on cleaning.
  15. Get a Mak All the aperture for lots less - course then you are stuck with a very high F ratio but nothing is perfect
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