GavStar

3 minutes ago, Piero said:

@BGazing Well, we are not the first ones getting the MEF-3. Actually, the majority of members upgrade the standard focuser with this microfocuser, rather than replacing it completely with a FT one. Over time, it will be more and more clear how effective to us this works.

 

@Stu Out of curiosity, which models of Tak focusers have you experienced issues with? Do you reckon the problem was due to the MEF-3 or the focuser itself (e.g. rotation movements, backslash along the travel, etc) ?

My issues with the mef-3 and Tak focuser were due to the mef-3 screws gradually working loose rather than anything with the Tak focuser itself. Also I did find the metal plate flexed a bit when using heavy eyepieces which made it lose a bit of the feel imo

20 minutes ago, BGazing said:

Has anyone had any chance to test their FC100 DC/F in decent seeing on Mars? How well are they corrected in red?

mikednight is your man on this - from his sketches he clearly gets great views with his FC

5 minutes ago, SpaceBass said:

Well now it's in stock for a bit, I'm wondering if the issue mentioned by @GavStar a few posts ago is anything to be concerned about?  

If your using it for visual only then no issue since you won’t notice it. It’s only if you do longer exposure photos is there a potential  issue...

3 hours ago, FLO said:

Sshhhh! It wasn't a large delivery. We aren't sure how much longer they will be available 

I’m guessing you mean that the current stock will likely sell out soon, rather than skywatcher completely discontinuing the mount?

Its a great mount and it’s only been available less than a year?

This is a pic of my nightvision monocular ready for action. Of course normally I’d just hold the thing and sweep the sky but to be able to do widefield 1x phone photos I need to mount it to keep it completely still for 10 secs...

5 minutes ago, Stu said:

I assume you mean mount Gavin?  

I suspect this might be a backlash issue. Does it vary depending on which direction you have just centred the object? It could be that the gearing lash is just unwinding before picking up the tracking again? Does that make sense?

Well I guess I do have odd issues ?

But yes my mount was playing up as well. Sometimes it was worse than others but always there. Backlash makes sense but wouldn’t this sort itself out after a few seconds? Even if I waited a bit it still shows dodgy stars...

I’ve had this scope since it was released last August and really like it (apart from the dovetail clamp and the issues re connecting it to sky safari ?).

However I had another slightly odd issue at the weekend. I was using it to take short exposure (10 second) exposures and if I just let the scope goto the target and didn’t touch it further, the 10 second photos gave very good round star shapes.

However if I then adjusted the position of the object to be in the centre of the fov and then took a 10 second photo then I got some star tails as if the tracking was not quite right. This happened even if I pressed ok on the centre object button on the synscan app.

Has anyone got any ideas how to sort this out?

Had a very nice observing session tonight. I will post some details in due course but I managed to view this object at last - lagoon nebula.

11 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

I'm quite content with my MEF 3 micro focuser and would happily fit one to any Tak scope, even the longer DL. I find it very precise even at very high powers, so when the undulating atmosphere subtly defocused the image, the lightest touch of the MEF 3 fine tunes the image again with no effort. Although an FT would be a nice addition, I would personally find it hard to justify the expense when the MEF 3 performs the task admirably.

I guess we differ on this one then Mike ?

I found that the thin metal plate that attaches the mef-3 to the existing Tak focuser did flex a bit in use. However I was using rather heavy 2 inch eyepieces such as the 21mm ethos so that can’t have helped ?

Also the small screws that fixed the fine focuser to the rack came loose twice in use resulting in the fine focuser knob not working. A pain to sort out in the dark! After this happened a second time I got fed up with it and ordered the full feathertouch. ?

6 hours ago, John said:

It does seem slightly odd to be discussing focusser upgrades for £2K-£2.5K 3.9 inch scopes

My TMB/LZOS 130 F/9.2 has a Feathertouch and it is a beautiful piece of kit.

 

I think if Tak supplied their scopes with a 2 speed focuser as standard there would be a lot less discussion. For me, when viewing at high magnification, I require a fine focuser. Therefore upgraded the focuser on my fc100’s immediately. I initially went for the Tak mef-3 upgrade but found it a bit imprecise. 

I then got a 2 speed feathertouch for my Lunt 60 solar scope and thought it felt so much better than my Tak wth mef-3. So I went the ‘Stu’ route and got a whole new feathertouch focuser and have not looked back since - it’s brilliant! This does seem quite rare though - only seen me, Stu and Marcus z with Taks with full feathertouches.

In addition Tak did sell some tsa-120s with a feathertouch as standard rather than its own focuser - that says something to me.

My TECs came with feathertouches as standard - never crossed my mind to upgrade those ? My astro-physics has an extremely well made 2 speed astro physics focuser - however imo it’s not as good as the feathertouch on my TEC - a little less precise. The latest 92mm astro-physics has a feathertouch 2 speed as standard!!!

Here’s a couple of my dual setups. The extra vixen clamp for the Panther mount is very handy. 

3 minutes ago, Ande said:

Haha ?.  No, I didn’t mount it on the wrong side.  I’m pretty sure that I’ve got a Friday afternoon special.  I can’t see anything more that I could be doing.  Think I just need to accept that it does it’s own thing, so I’ll have to forget the goto side of things.  Bit of a shame as it wasn’t exactly cheap.  Thanks all ?

Can’t you return it? If you can’t use the goto, imo it makes the mount unusable.

I was using my az gti last night and it worked fine. I don’t bother with the north alignment bit. I just make sure it’s level and then use the 2 bright stars alignment process. It brought all the targets from all sections of the sky straight in close to the centre of the fov of the scope. However I  did have a wide 1.5 degrees tfov so that also helped.

One silly mistake I have done once with the scope was to mount the scope the wrong way on the mount (ie with the scope on the right rather than the left side and as stand behind it). That really messed the tracking and finding up ?. I know I’m not the only one that’s done that as well!

8 hours ago, Highburymark said:

Me too. 6ft 5ins and a steadily worsening back injury. For me the FC-100 is in a class of its own - a sub-3kg 4 inch 'scope with excellent optics which sits happily on a camera tripod and is airline cabin portable. The only competition I guess would be one of the Borgs. I just consider myself lucky to have such an option because even the C8 was getting too much for my back. 

There’s also the 95mm Baader travel companion which one SGL member has got and is very impressed with it. More portable than the Tak but even more expensive...

I put my heated dew strap on the thin part of the FC100 tube just before the dew shield. This also seems to work fine - I’ve never had the objective dew over.

7 minutes ago, BGazing said:

i salute your spine and your back. alas, i am a lanky crooked guy who has to go light.

What has surprised me is that even though they are the same weight (about 12kgs) I find my C11 much more awkward to mount than the 160.

3 minutes ago, AKB said:

Now that really is "grab and go"! 

And I spotted that typo as I was writing  and thought I’d corrected it!! ?

10 hours ago, BGazing said:

Best bang for the buck is in the eye of the beholder.

150mm refractor is a dream scope for permanent mounting in a suburban home for the Moon and the planets.

It ain't portable for sure. But I'd love to have it in my collection.

I use a 160mm refractor as a portable scope. It can be set up and taken down in around 10mins. Not as grab and go as the 100mm frac but still pretty good.

1 hour ago, kerrylewis said:

I use a Farpoint dovetail plate as this pic:

Interesting kerrylewis so you prefer the Tak clamp to the parallax tube rings?

1 hour ago, DirkSteele said:

I might treat myself to this as a tiny travel scope when even the Tak FS-60 is too much...And there was me thinking I was done purchasing equipment

I’ve decided that my tv60 is as small as I want to go. I find it’s not the scope that causes space issues but rather the mount.

However I’ve now got a short tripod similar to your Gitzo which has definitely helped in this regard. 

13 minutes ago, Miguel1983 said:

Hi,

i thought about following up on this post, so i now have used the AZ GTI a number of times, and i must say, i find that the GoTo isn't all that great in my experience.

Since last posts here i've used a cross-haired ocular (12,5mm) so alignment should be better, all tough, i must say, it doesn't make it easier, you really have to hunt the alignment stars with that kind of magnification.

Alt-az corrections in doing so aren't helping because the mount can do some strange jumps when youre manualy fine aligning the alignment star, don't now if this is something backlash correction can correct ?

After alignment, the GoTo can sometimes be way off target...

 

Anyone who has similar experience ?

I can see that a 12.5mm eyepiece makes finding the alignment stars tricky. 

I bought a 26mm 70 degree crosshair eyepiece for this reason and it’s makes the alignment procedure easy and accurate in my experience.

15 minutes ago, kerrylewis said:

I am currently using the Skyfi wifi adapter to link my AzEQ6gti to Sky Safari and it works fine. Sky Safari doesn’t have alignment routines so I align the mount first using the handset.

Having seen the availability of the Synscan  app I was wondering if I could use that to align the mount using the Skyfi unit as the WiFi source. I actually suspect not as I would assume that the Synscan app might only work with the Skywatcher WiFi unit.

thanks for the comments chaps, I hope this makes my request a bit clearer ! 

The app is free so I suppose I could just try it! 

Whenever I’m using skyfi, I always align it via the mount handset first and the connect to skyfi to control sky safari. This is also the case with the az gti hence the need to get the handset to do the initial alignment and enable the mount to be controlled via skyfi.

But I see there is an align button in SkySafari so I might have a go using this next time.

5 minutes ago, Stu said:

Is that using the handset though Gavin? That has to be there to replace the synscan app doesn't it?

Thinking about it, yes I think you do need the handset since you need to be able to plug the computer lead from the skyfi module into the Az gti and the only way you can do this is via the handset.

It’s been a while since I last used the az gti at night.

1 hour ago, kerrylewis said:

Morning Colin. Do you, or anyone, know if the Synscan app works with the Skyfi WiFi adapter or only with the Skywatcher adapter? 

Kerry, I use the skyfi WiFi adapter on my az gti. I align the mount using synscan. Then once aligned turn on skyfi and using the correct scope settings connect the scope to skyfi. I then use SkySafari to control the mount and just ignore the synscan app. I think SkySafari has much better functionality.

I’ve sent several astro things to Europe including a 30mm Pentax XW and they all arrived fine. As Stu says pack it assuming it’s going to be dropped.

I even sent a 160mm apo refractor (not my Tec160) back to Italy. Now that was a bit scary but I arranged the courier over the internet and it arrived within a day in perfect condition! ?