YKSE

Shaun, the SUN seems making your EP case smaller, when are you going for a full set of Kellners

Nice work John, SLVs seems to be good planetary EPs for spec wearers.

I bought a new case a few weeks back since I've outgrown the old one, plus it was a bit awkwardly organized. Yesterday I finally got time to organize it. Still got room for a few more bits and pieces, although at the moment I don't feel the need to add anything.

Nice organized case! The extra space seems to feel the need of new toys.

Excellent job Alan, you're not making it easier for those who just want to pick one

Don't use them much now as I find the Baader Zoom set at 8mm with the 2.25 Barlow gives me a better view, especialy for splitting doubles - to my eyes anyway.

Avtar

There you're, chance to free space for 2 or 3 EPs

Great write up, very infromative and excellent guide. +1 for pinned!

Here comes the actual stuff

Time to cut new foam for reorganized EPs, first some paper work, looks like there's a space for a small one.

drawing:

3D model:

After deciding to get a Baader Mark III Zoom for PST, SQM for measuring sky and 1.35" amici for daytime viewing,  I'd been googling around to find good prices for these items, with no surprice, Telescope Service has all the items with best prices in addition to their European best price garantee. Purchasing experience was just as good as before, they recomended SQM-L as a friend had recommended to me, told me that the Baader diagonal needs another adapter, etc. On top of these, I got some discount as kind of a regular cumtomer. Nice.

The items were ready for shipment when  I discovered my mistake in choosing dispatcher, they went through their hundras of parcels to find mine and re-label it and changed it to new dispatcher, excellent service.

Would you swap one brilliant night in a year for ten average ones?  Would you be very frustrated on that special night if in your bag you didn't have the ultimate weapon?

Different for us all I guess but the idea of pushing the barriers I can see can be very attractive     

That ultimate weapon can be a £50 ortho, or some EPs cost many times more for a large FOV with VERY little noticeable optical improvement.

I don't think I mind the FOV yet, but I do care about eye relief, not sure what EP will fit this category. Thinking of the 5mm Celestron X-Cel LX, any other ideas?

HR planetary, BST ED, and X-Cel are usually named of about the same performance with good eye relief, I wear glasses, and have no difficulty in getting the whole FOV in either HR or BST.

I think the great joy of very expensive EPs is that if you look after them they have a high secondhand value.   So to some degree spending big (within reason and if you can cashflow ot) on EPs for a beginner is low risk.

Sorry wittering.  My vote is even as a beginner spend as much as you can on EPs upto £200 and buy one or two at that level rather than 4 at the lower level.  But don't forget also to invest in a quality Barlow once two goodies are in the bag.   I found good EP, bad Barlow not a good combo 

I'm not sure that expensive EPs have higher secondhand value, by buging new and sell used, you'll lose about 30% to 40% for EPs like BST up to TV or Pentax. In actually amont, you loose more money by buying new expensive EPs. The best way to save money is to buy used high quality EPs.

Sure the expensive EPs have high quality, but most money is paid to get wider field of view(FOV), better edge performance in the wider FOV in fast scopes and viewing comfort (eye relief e.g.). If you can live with narrower FOV and short eye relief, optically the baader classic ortho for £50 outperformce many EP cost many times more.

Just my two cents.

I just got a new case a Dorr Silver 50 case which more-or-less dwarfs the old (which was quite solid at 43x33x17cm). The new one measures 52x42x22cm, which is a bigger leap than you might think.

DSCN3707.JPG

Looks like you have enough space to dig big holes in your bank acount

I've got a Celestron Astromaster 114EQ with a focal length of 8.77

I think you meant F8.77 here, your calculations looks right to me.

Very precisely done YKSE, looking good.

Doesn't the yellow interfere with your night vision though  ???????

Not sure about that. Maybe I'll find it out hard way.

Cloudy last night, got my chance to cut the foams according to the CAD design, not as neat as in digital world, but better fit than plug foam.

Only  cover foam left to be cut.

With addtion of Aero 40mm, and planned purchase of Maxvision 16mm, 20mm, and BST 8mm 12mm, my EP case feels a bit full. I've done some 3-D studies in CAD, and it seems like that just a new customized foam needed. The drawing looks like:

and here's a 3D view (with guessed dimension of coming EPs of course):

Looks like that I have space for one more ortho

I found RVO when googling around about different shops. A closer look showed that they had quite attractive price for Telrad which I hade on my buying list, also they have price match promise.

An email was sent to check shipping cost, the answer was 15£, and came quickly. That's quite good since most UK shops charge 30£ or more for shipping outside UK. Since I had 40mm Aero and 2"OIII on my list too, and not willing to pay extra postage by shopping around, so I checked the prices for the EP and filter in other UK shops, then asked if they would like to match the prices. A quick yes came just a couple of hours later. very alert and service-minded people, I would say. The order was placed, the package came very nicely packat for each and every item. Excellent!

I've purchased most of my astro stuffs with them. In the beginning it was mainly because of the amount of choices and reasonable prices.  I got more and more impressed of the efficeiency and service-minded these German. They are easy to talk with, happy to give their opinions about what may suit the customer better, I took the 3A instead of 1.5A power supply by their advice.

They are very easy to deal with if there's any issue: the first UHC filter I got itted all EPs but not HR15, after getting it  confirmed by some e-mail exchange, I just sent back the EP and filter, and got a new set and refund for my return postage.

TS has European price-match on many SW, Celestron and TV products, which is  another good reason for me to buy stuffs there, and they do try to their best to match the prices.

The shipment has always been very quick with tracking, delivery exactly on the day as estimated!

An excellent review, it should be recommended to all the new telescope buyers who want an easy-to-operate mount.

I'd like to add some coments based on my own experience with EQ3 sysscan goto mount:

1. Update the firware to V3.35, the alignment and polar alignment procedures are much easier to understand and follow.

2. A good star atlas is always needed.

3. With practice you will speed up your alignment, It took me over an hour to get my first alignment done, now it's someting between 10 to 20 minutes.

Clear Sky