Alan White

25mm TV Plossl is a very comfortable eyepiece and I enjoy it a lot. DRT's loss, my gain, thanks Derek!

All very nice Piero, I really like the Baader clicklock. I have a 2" to 1 1/4 clicklock and will buy the one for my ED80 soon.

The Post person today brought me......... A brand new Meade Series 3000 5mm Plossl, Made in Japan, still in its plastic bag and BC&F price tag of £53. It really is unused and I opened the plastic bag. Bought out of curiosity and to go with my treasured Series 3000 9.5mm Plossl (Japan). Sadly this may now turn into a series 3000 Japan obsessive run of purchasing, fortunate they are so reasonable in price. The EP is obviously short eye relief, but the eye lens is recessed and very comfortable to nuzzle your eye into. Does it show it has been cloudy?

AS this went off topic about the 35mm Eudiascopic, here is the infor from the horses mouth. Clearly 25585 got lucky again, you should enter the lottery my friend!!

Everyone to their own taste and comfort CrazyPanda. Eye-relief in the short form is something you cope with or hate in my view.

As many owners of the Skywatcher 150mm f5 750mm fl scope will know, storage bags for this scope are either difficult to find or expensive when you do find one. In the past SGLers have used Cricket Bags, Wooden Boxes or Other Padded Bags in place of the couple of expensive bags sometimes available. I had looked high and low and been using an oversized D.J. equipment bag to date. Well worry no more; Geoptik have released a suitable bag and at £64.99 not too expensive. So here is my quick review and pictures, hope it is of help to others....... The bright red bag is sized spot on for the scope and is lined with a velvet type material, is well padded and has nice handles that have rubber grips. The picture shows the bag sitting upon the solid case for my ED80 scope. The bag is very well put together and made from high quality material, the outside looks to be a 'Ballistic Nylon' type of material and a very red red colour. Think Ferrari and you will be at the correct colour! Padding is a good thickness of a suitable foam, feels to be about 10mm thickness. Good Zip with two tags, so opens in both directions and gives a very generous opening in which to place the scope into the bag. The bag is very well fitting and suitable for purpose and at the price, very reasonable. I am known to be careful with my spending and careful in what I purchase. Highly recommend this bag to the SGL community. I purchased this from RVO but other retailers are now stocking this bag, sadly to date the SGL sponsor does not, but who knows.....

This Tak porn must stop right now I am having trouble stopping hyperventilating over such things, please stop feeding my Tak desires more than they already burn. Until I win the lottery or move they will just smoulder, but then who knows. All those fine telescopes, very nice and as others have said, what a selection Tak have or do make. The best thing is all of the scopes you SGLers have shown have been in use, so that's a fine thing in itself. One day a FS102 (my precious) will be mine. mine, all mine (said in best Lord of the Rings voice).

My latest set up, its forever changing, so I have given up nice matching slots for now, as well as nice matching sets!

I started with pieces of paper. Then went onto sketch pads like Mike. Moved over to full notes for 2017 and found it hard, so skipped some sessions being recorded. May now go 2018 with a basic note pad like several others above. In all honesty the main thing is the memories of what I have seen and that relies on the grey matter, sadly that is not as good as it was memory wise!

Don't do Hermes down too much. I have used them several hundred times and all delivered in one undamaged piece, one single parcel lost form 226 sent in 4 years. The Mak is a solid bit of kit, so should survive in the postal system ok. Nice scope you have received.

The post person (So pc me) delivered something I have desired for quite some time. TV Nagler Zoom 3-6mm ? Obviously it’s now clouded out for the next week, but then I have just had two clear nights while visiting Herefordshire, now if I had my scope rather than binos I would be ecstatic rather than slightly ecstatic.

Timebandit, was that Marks one? Nice scope.

Christmas does odd things to Astronomers. The LV's are an eyepiece I would like to try, liked the SLV, but hated the twist up eyecup design. The LV's may be the best of both? The TV Plossl are such a nice EP to 11mm.

So what Plossl's are you using for Mono viewing now Mike?

I really like my 11mm TV Plossl, something about the image it renders. Short eye relief for sure, but not ridiculous, now binoviewed they must be great.

The TV Plossl range is very worthy of the praise it receives. The eye relief gets quite short from 11mm downwards. They have a wonderful clarity, good light transmission and good contrast to my eye. I own the 25, 20, 15 and 11. I did own the 32mm a while ago, bought new. The 32mm has much longer eye-relief and I found it too long myself. Rectified with an eye cup extender sold by Televue but cost another £30+ I bought two TV Plossl and then tried some Vixen SLV all 50 degree eyepieces, bought all the SLV and I sold the SLV and then bought all my TV Plossl in preference used.. Use them in both my ED80 refractor and 150P f5 Newtonian and they are excellent in both. I have developed a liking for wider field of view of late, but use both depending on how I feel and what I am observing. Will never sell my TV Plossl set and may add to it yet, I like them that much. In the place of the 8mm TV Plossl I have a Takahashi LE 7.5mm, which is a great eyepiece and has longer eyerelief than the 8mm TV Plossl. You will not regret buying them, especially if you buy used. Look on here, Astro Buy Sell and eBay. eBay has some listed at present.

Interesting and I fully understand your rationale. I did similar but used Tele Vue Plossls and still do, but I like the longer eye relief at shorter fl and the wider five as I use a manual mount, so nudge and curse. The XW give that same clarity but with the desired eyerelief and wider fov.

Mike glad the XW thoughts have got you pulse rate up, the 10mm does with me. I am getting closer to the next one, hope Christmas monies will be the final push. I have since used the 10 in my 150p.newtonian, which is. f5 an it was great with this too, so much so I want the 7 and 5 in 2018. For longer the 22 LVW is not going, it’s far too good. Are you still an XW owner, could not see in the eyepiece case pictures?

Sound logic indeed. So that was you who pulled the trigger on the 7xl Dave, I was about to go for it, when it was posted sold. I have barlowed the 10mm with my TV 2x Barlow and was able to use it ok, I don’t like Barlow but needs must sometimes.

My thoughts exactly.

I am working on fund raising for the 7 and 5 now John, Christmas is so over rated, it’s the thought rather than size of present that counts....... or Christmas Beans on Toast, these big meals are so over rated too..... Turn off the heating for January......hmmmmm not so sure on this one?

Just wondering how the family will react to no Christmas Presents to allow a 7 and 5 xw to join my ep case? Hmmmmm, very tempting.

Nice that you are now complete. Looks great, perhaps the rise in LVW prices will now abate and return to pre-sudden demand level?

Mr Locke, the luck is running with you this week. Grab it, especially that close to home.

Phew