blinky

I have them, the first series produced bad halo's but I got mine replaced with the new ones (which will be the ones FLO is selling) and they are fine.  Im sure there are better quality ones out there but I think these work fine.  Ive used them at F4 and they still work fine which I believe can be a challenge for some brands.

Offset is not important - as long as you have enough offset to not get 0 signal pixels you are fine.  This is why its never been exposed in Ascom!  The Ascom driver has presets for highest dynamic range, lowest read noise and unity gain - you can also set gain manually to whatever you want.

The EQ6 I have is very old and I don’t think well looked after, that’s my reasoning for a full strip, degrease,replacement of bearings and belt mod. At least then I know I won’t get anymore out of it. Tbh though I get around 1.3 arc secs guiding as it is so maybe won’t see a massive improvement. My dec axis is bad though, has more backlash than I would like

Found an SKF one on eBay, it’s actually a Nissan spare, I think it’s the wheel bearing but it’s brand new and the correct part number and has skf stamped on it

Realised that one of the 2 is an SKF one, so I only need to buy the RA axis bearing

4 minutes ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

You get what you pay for......

Fair point!  Think i will go and buy proper SKF ones then

I’m replacing all the bearings in my EQ6 and bought generic taper bearings for a few pounds each, just now thinking, should I have paid extra for SKF ones or as these dont do much work will generic ones be fine?  I’m going to get SKF ones for all other bearings BTW, was just these seemed a good price and i jumped at them!

I just wondered if there was better quality ones available, that’s all really

I think EP grease would be closest to the original. It’s meant for extreme pressure, or when things like the meshed gears are left stationary for long periods of time, so it does not spread out.

or this.... https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/geoptik-equatorial-mount-grease-kit.html  not used it myself but intending to purchase for my strip and regrease

I doing a full strip and regrease and bearing replacement in my aging EQ6 Pro mount - Im not paying £70 a pop for new motors as they seem to be standard NEMA17 ones which can be sourced on ebay for very little money - just wondered if this is correct and has anybody replaced the EQ6 Pro motors with NEMA 17's?

that's exactly what I want, shame they are out of stock

Not really an option, dont know anybody with a 3D printer unfortunately 

The EQ6 I have is an old one, thats been stripped and rebuilt a number of times by previous owners, as a result its missing a few bits like the work end float covers - I’m wondering if anybody has an old broken EQ6 lying about that I could purchase these parts from?  Ive contacted OVL but they say its a 4month wait for the parts and they have no come back with a price yet!  I’m also going to do a respray of it as its quite chipped and going to change it to white as well, also thinking of a few high gloss red highlights to make it go with my ZWO kit!

Less is more.... I thought you had to pack the grease in

Just to conclude this - it was away for around 2 weeks, RVO sent it back to WO - here is a quick snap from last night, loads of cloud about, but I think the stars are fixed now!

Yeah I had one and ended up selling it on - could not get it to not bind when slewing.  Only recently I read that they did not work with every mount!  As has been mentioned, Aeroquest are no longer running nowadays

Yours is lovely Carole, think info get the chance I will grab some rgb for it. It's a nice target and well placed at the moment

Cant really find much info or many images on this one - 46X5min subs ASI1600 Mono in Ha with my F4 newt (Now collimated, well nearly!)

I think the mono version looks like a brain, especially with that extra filament that looks like a part of the brain stem...

Very nice as always Ollie!

Looks good, think you might not be on the latest version of SGP - the focus has improved in it

although it does look look perfect the primary mirror far was not on and there were tube currents about

Managed to borrow a good collimator and do a final tweak, think its nailed now 

I wont be able to get any O3 or SII as the WO ZS73 is on its way back to Taiwan as the screws are too tight in the cell.  This is a combination of last year and this years data - come to think of it I have O3/Sii from last year.....  Anyway, a little under 5hours in 5min subs with the ZS73 and ASI1600 mono with ZWO Ha filter.

I always think the dark clouds look like animals - I can see an Ostrich/Peacock, a man on the back of a Camel and also some leaping Cats?

37 minutes ago, alacant said:

If the top of the tube is at 10-o'clock, and you have an f4-f5 telescope, good.

HTH.

Cheers! Took all night, what I eventually did was back off the 3 small screws on the secondary right into the body then brought the secondary mirror back so it was also flush against the body.  This meant I had a ‘square’ flush mirror and found it was easier to start from here. I think the root of the problem, was that the secondary was too far down the tube and I needed a lot of tilt in it, bringing it back in, it only took a few minutes to fix as everything just seemed a lot rounder, due to not having massive tilt on the mirror.