philj

When I first reassembled mine after modding, the only sign of life was the red led briefly flashing when powering up, no shutter or display.

I stripped it again and reinserted all ribbon cables and thankfully it all worked. 

It,s a pain but I would recommend the same

Oh go on then 😃

At the risk of being a less shy and retiring Tak owner here is a copy of my post on the frac thread.

Well it,s been awhile since I posted on here, fracs have come and gone over that time. Mainly gone due to house move and health.

But I have fallen in love again. I got a baby Tak at auction back in June and I love it. It,s a 2001 FS60C, slightly longer in body than the latest CB offering. Came with q etxtender to turn it into F9, Tak diagonal and 24 and 7mm Tak LE eps.

A great little spotter/ widefield scope/ OK at f9 with the 1.6 q extension and a really easy scope to image with.

Here it is rigged for the 1000d, yes, that is an ed80 flattener/reducer on there 😀

here it is in F9 guize with the q ectender on it

And a couple of first light snaps through it.

Here you go Stu, just posted this on Show us your frac but at least it,s a Tak 😃

Doh that link didnt work well, mines the last post on it this morning

Well it,s been awhile since I posted on here, fracs have come and gone over that time. Mainly gone due to house move and health.

But I have fallen in love again. I got a baby Tak at auction back in June and I love it. It,s a 2001 FS60C, slightly longer in body than the latest CB offering. Came with q etxtender to turn it into F9, Tak diagonal and 24 and 7mm Tak LE eps.

A great little spotter/ widefield scope/ OK at f9 with the 1.6 q extension and a really easy scope to image with here it is rigged for the 1000d

Yes, that is an ed80 flattener/reducer on there 😀

In F9 visual guize

and a quick shot through it and the 1000d

Glad your impressed with the Tooic/Towa. I still use mine regularly, clouds permitting, and always enjoy the crusp views. A well set up Towa 339 gives excellent views. I got rid of the focuser on mine, fitted new baffkes, ota extension and a 2" focuser. It works superbly with  modern eyepieces.

Tge first camera I used back in the day was a Zenit B. A rather weighty camera for my Tasco 10te refractir I had at the time, took some balancing that did. Lunar with fp4 and tentative dso with tri X it turned out reasonable results for me at the time. I remember hand guiding for 5 minutes once, literally a pain in the neck. 

That,s nice, well done. Another classic given new life

If you have concentric circkes when looking at out of focus stars then all sounds Ok, I woukdnt worry too much. A case of Don,t fix it if it aint broke.

However sct collimation is straightforward as per Peters post above.

Here you go MZack, your telescope in 2010 when I was testing it. It didnt have the brass dew shield at the time so I cobbled up a temporary one.

Pictured on my old Celestron CGE in my observatory at the old house. Observatory sorely missed but the rapidly light polluted skies are not.

I was at that same show Dave and had a natter with Richard and John. I seem to remember John was displaying a 6" brass Fullerscopes refractor on his stand, modern optics in it. It was a good show.

I had bought my old 4" F15 Fullerscopes deluxe refractor off John a few months before.

Congrats, that is a lovely scope. I tested that very scope in the early days for Richard to give him feedback. I fondly remember the views, doubkes, lunar and planetary. If I hadnt just brought a vintage f15 the month before I would have relieved Richard of it.

Enjoy

Thank goodness for that, I am not the only one that gets wound up by this.

The wife tells me off when I lecture someone after being asked about Super, Wolf, Blood, Lilac, Pink etc etc moons.

I reckon It,s this sensationalist age we are in, fueled by social media and advertising  most things have to be hyped to grab readers/viewers attention these days.

Just watch a few telly programmes and count how many times the words Brilliant, Fantastic, Incredible crop up. Sign of the times unfortunately.

Theres a lot of glass and metal in these scopes which require quite awhile to acclinate. When I first got my old Mak 180 I had similar views and then made sure tge scope was outside and cooling for at least an hour before doing anything serious with it. Once cooled the scope performed superbly. It wasnt a grab and go scope for that very reason

Continuing my theme of imaging with a vintage long fl achro and mirrorless camera combo. Here's my shot from last night.

Stack of 100 subs through vintage Towa 339 F15 80mm with Olympus OM D EM1 mirrorless. Each sub ISO200 at 1/200s. PIPP and AS3 then sharpened in Photoshop and a little colour adjustment.

Quite pleased with this. It's in colour, Chromatic Aberration quite low because the F15 was collimated well and nicely cooled. Evidence of CA at the limb, (being blown a bit) but the bits that matter are quite good. I reckon there's still some wobbly frames in there, one day when I have nothing better to do I may sort through and delete these then try again.

Click etc for full resolution

28, sorry 

Here,s my review whenI got it

12 hours ago, dweller25 said:

Great set up @philj - which Model Berlebach tripod is that ?

Its the Uni with tray, very stable even with an Heq5 and ed127 on top

20 hours ago, John said:

The odd thing is that I've seen that plate on some GP's but not others. I've recently sold a GP but I can't for the life of me recall if it had the plate or not

That "Cloudynights" thread seems to about the GP-DX  / GPD2 mounts which have a different design for the latitude adjustment bolts and their mountings.

Back to the GP mounts, is that plate removed to allow the mount head to be used in alt-azimuth mode ?. (I maybe incorrect on that)

 

Your old mount has the plate John

My 1960s Towa as it is now.

Scope updated with Craford and extension, (the scope and how I did the mod featured in Astronomy Now in 2010)

Sitting atop my Berlebach and recently acquired Vixen GP with drives mount (thanks John)

This is my grab and go ish set up, e.g. when I havent got time or cant be doing with setting up the HEQ5 and / or Meade 127edt  and goto. Just set up, point at polaris , switch on the drives and away I go 😀 cloud permitting

A decent star atlas, I still have my Nortons from the 70s 🙂

Lidl ironing chair, so I can sit comfortably and observe

RA finder, Saves my back and knees

Varifocal spectacles, so I can see the stars and then read the star map without changing from distance to reading glasses. Oh the joy of ageing 🙂

I see they havent changed much.

Years ago I bought a CGE mk1 mount, not cheap at all. It had 11 faults, mechanical and electrical. It went back to the supplier twice. The electronics werent well put together, loudy soldering and the cheapest most unreliable connectors they could find. The connectors and wiring were 4 of the faults.

Celestron customer service at the time were a waste of time  good ole Dave Hinds eventually sorted some of the faults, I sorted the rest.

I fitted one once using a 2" visual back that screwed on to the back of the scope  I had to get an adaptor ring I think to convert the thread on the 127 to accept the visual back. It worked well.

Well done another classic brought back to use

If you ever experienced a Celestron CGE mk1 going daft due to mount lead or microswitch problems then the dictionary definition is very apt 🙂

I took 40 subs for each on this occassiin, I used to take about 100 but I wanted to check this technique with the live view.

You can still stack with undriven, its fiddly but doable. Adjust the moon to be in the centre of the frame each shot. Not the best way, it can give aligning software a headache.

Thats the way I have always checked refractors and the reason I love collimateable cells, these new fangled cnc,d jobbies are ok but push pull screws are tge best.

I never collimate an ota with a diagonal in place, I do check after to see what effect the diagonal has tho. Most of the collimation issues I find are with the focusers unless there has been trauma or finger trouble in the cell.

I wrote about my experiences some time ago here

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://philjay2000.tripod.com/usefulstuff/adventures.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjw2-fF2ZzqAhW1Q0EAHTbIBqMQFjAAegQIBxAB&usg=AOvVaw2rzHdLJuEtui4RFpCFFgLD