Kusanagi

Of all the limited amount of eyepiece's I own my favourite is my 40mm Meade super wide angle 4000 series ( old japan series ), it gives lovely crystal clear views on its own, and when paired with my ES 2X focal extender. Some might say it is a bit big for my dob ( 250mm ) I like its views and keep going back to it.

I know you have said that the time and date are correct, but have you tried putting the day and month the other way round. I.E. mm-dd-yyyy instead of dd-mm-yyyy Also have you checked that it is not switching itself 12 hours out, as I have just helped a friend sort his GOTO out which was doing something similar and that was set for AM instead of PM ( would do the alignment correctly, say it was aligned and then go to a totally different place to where the object you wanted to look at was ).

Its a while since I last posted about my dob and have made a few mods to it. First up was a mod to the feet, on use I had noticed that the dob had a habit of moving out of place when turning on azimuth, and I also had no way of levelling the dob base for use with turning circles so I decided to make a set of adjustable tripod feet to make it more steady and easily adjustable to make level. Next up was to make and install a DIY digital turning circle set up for use with Skysafari which I had seen done on another forum. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/589521-37-dobsonian-dsc-for-diy-makers/. This setup is based around a Node mcu ESP8266 arduino unit with a 600 p/r optical encoder ( geared to give higher resolution ) on azimuth and a 303 magnetometer on altitude. I have now got this setup installed and working on my dob ( after much brain scratching and then realizing I had not set the correct upload rate to the arduino unit ) but have not yet used it on a viewing yet but have played with it indoors and it looks very promising.

I managed to get around to making a filter for my dob so was able to get the scope out for the few hours ( or was that moments ) that we had some sun, no photo's of the transit as I forgot to order the adaptor for my camera, doh!.

I have got the ES 2" 2x focal extender but do not have the TV powermate so cannot compare, but I have found it to be an excellent addition to my collection as it gives nice and sharp images when in use with no apparent lose of light due to more glass and very well built ( but it makes it a little heavy ). I have read that the performance of the ES focal extender is very close to a TV powermate ( the TV is said to be slightly better performing ) but it is a lot cheaper and when I was looking for a barlow / focal extender and wanted one that did not change the eye relief, I could not warrant the extra cost of the TV powermate as it is at least a third more expensive than the ES focal extender and as I had read it was not a third better performing.

That is exactly the same thought I had concerning the focal lengths ( and the 18mm was to far away from the 11mm and to close to my 40mm on a focal extender ). I will do a small review when I get some viewing time in on the eyepiece. P.S. This will probably be posted in my thread in the eyepiece section.

It is quite a nice little package at the price it is at, and it is supposed to be sealed and gas purged to stop condensation in this new design but still using the original optics. In fact if this one works out ok I will probably buy the 7mm one as well. The only thing I wish was that one was made with a focal length of around 10 - 11mm, as it stands that length will probably end up being occupied by a Explore Scientific eyepiece.

The first of my wide angle eyepiece collection.