PeterW

7yrs and counting.... still enjoying the view! @GavStar has gone exploring what it is possible to find and what optics gives the best view and reported back to the rest of us. There are cheaper Photonis Echo tunes, which we have yet to see how they perform. PEter

The this the X3 material?? If so what nozzle and print settings/temps are you using, as I’ll give it a run on a small part (part of my frustration was it was a 2day build of nearly 700g...). PEter

Had to resort to recruiting a “lucky charm” from thingiverse to help keep the printer gremlins at bay. Latest filament I hate is RS PLA+ (tough PLA), print hot, print fast.... right, more like turn to crispy charcoal in the nozzle as soon as you turn your back... managed a print with slight extra heat but the layer adhesion was pants. I have recommended we go with polycarbonate if the part has to survive serious abuse. PEter

Depends on what’s available, if you can try and how much you trust. I note new UK military NV is almost on lease with the supplier doing the maintenance etc as part of the contract, so it’ll likely never end up on the secondhand market in years to come. Sadly it looks like this will always remain quite niche, unless the US changes ITAR and looks to make lots of money selling the “good enough” stuff..... can’t see that happening, though the US have been lobbied by their thermal companies to relax restrictions somewhat as foreign companies can have greater sales and hence greater investment and hence produce better kit in the future. PEter

Been there, cops turned up a memorable club session thinking we were “car breakers”:.. someone brought a huge dob in a transit van!! Wimbledon any good, more urban than Bushy. Peter

Nope, but there and devices that can measure the tube spec. Also the power supplies can fail.... If there are no obvious defects in the view(black spots, burnt bits) and you can see stuff then I wouldn’t worry too much... in this case the vendor is checking different tubes with specs, so much better than totally buying blind! PEter

The are designed for the military with 10000hrs a a “50%” degradation spec target, used for hours a night, night after night and to be generally ill treated. I would not worry unless you are going out and using it for long periods every night... in which case if it did start to lose performance you will certainly have got your money’s worth! Peter

.... can see stuff you can’t in a huge (£££) Dobs.... Peter

Fear... when I walk about my suburban area at night there are hardly any people of any sort about (not even late at night). As long as you’re not in locations where you could expect trouble (tend to be overly lit, so unlikely) you should be fine. In the local park the drunks tend to stay close to the gates... probably scared of the dark too. observing with others is always more fun for the conversation and shared experience as anything else. peter

Printed coffee... cool!

Long term reflector user so few has never been a problem. I’ve just got some dew strips to prevent the wet menace affecting my binocular enjoyment. Never needed this sort of thing before, but I have seen how bad things can get for exposed bits of glass in the wrong conditions. Seem to get moderately warm when plugged into a beefy USB pack (5-12v converter). Looked at them on the thermal phone unit and they don’t appear to be very uniform, probably won’t make much impact if they are rotated around and the metal will spread the heat about. The warm bits get quite nicely warm to the touch. Don’t know what other people have found with their dew strips? Cheers Peter

NO NO NO.... I won’t threaten to “eat my socks” if the price of gen3 level NV drops significantly, but..... There are very few companies making this stuff, the industry is kept afloat by military orders. There are all sorts of export restrictions (even though plenty of different countries make stuff). The Americans just stopped one manufacturer buying ip the only other one, to maintain independence of supply. The hunting community are moving rapidly to thermal and digital NV due to cost and performance. if you want to see warm things at night... thermal beats intensifiers by a long way. The military are moving on using different wavelengths and merging the results to make it harder for stuff to hide away. Intensifiers are a niche, can’t see them going away, can’t see them getting much better and can’t see the price dropping. What’s good with this company is the addition of secondhand, the latest kit might show a bit more, but older stuff can still show quite a bit and if it costs a lot less and this enables more people to get into NV then great! as mentioned as hunters move from intensifiers this means more can show up for use in Astro! Amateur astronomers like to share observations, so not everyone NEEDS to get NV, just enough so the views get more commonly available. It’s especially good at showing just how MANY stars we have lost to light pollution, which can only be a good thing. There are still plenty of things that normal glass can do a better job on too. peter

Very nice, now need to find some smaller Sharpless to poke the 16” at. Sounds like we could have more NV users in the U.K. sometime.... put one on Santa’s list and be good!! peter

Wood fill..... oh boy, you poor thing!! Smells great, a &5£;&!; to print. I never had the breakage, but it you leave it for a microsecond at too high a temperature in the nozzle it would out goo all sorts of stuff and permanently block your nozzle!! Fast and cool with lots of retract.... preferably with much voodoo to stop the gremlins wrecking it! for ABS (and polycarbonate (tough as anything!!) and PVDF) I put a front door on the printer and use Dimafix and a 100C bed. Dimafix smells just amazing and sticks like anything at high temps and then just lets go magically when the bed cools down. There are a few reels of PLA I’ve found that after a while get small lengths that just break randomly (rest is fine).... drives you nuts as it will break at the feeder as soon as you turn your back! Today I was Faced by the dreaded random little inter layer gap.... something has affected the feed intermittently and then recovered, leaving me with a wasted weakened print!! When the work I love them and when they don’t...... RS Carbon P is a petg based carbon fibre loaded material that’s very stiff indeed and prints Ok without much smell, only thing to remember is to use a steel or harder (eg ruby) nozzle... I completely wore the end off two nozzles as I couldn’t believe it could happen... ended both prints with a 3mm aperture hole where the 0.4mm tip once was! peter

APM and Obserwerk big angles bins seem to not suffer from this compliant and deliver good views. peter

Never heard mention of any in the main vintage binocular sites... 4eyes!! peter

Found it when flicking through the Cambridge urge photographic atlas... the IC number probably makes it less visited than it should be as it’s not exactly hard to see. peter

... another note to keep the ball clean, can collect debris that leads to loosening. The adjustment on my cheap one enables my 15x70 to be held against gravity just by the ball tension. Very useful kit. PEter

0.8degree “bubble”, could be the lobster claw sh157 that is not too far away and sort of loops round? PEter

Of course, just need to find a paint that will work for the different polymers that can be printed. Peter

My understanding is that ASA is better for outside usage. UV resistance would be material dependent. I made a solar finder for a refractor... popped up the drawtube... certainly bubbled and smoked a bit in use... made in black, just what happens to be in the machine...... Got to learn somehow!! Peter

Saw this outside a local charity shop... looked a bit like a failed ATM bulls... no idea what it might actually be! peter

Good luck, it really is “good sized” Nebula. Makes a change from the usual Horse obsession. As mentioned @GavStar provided us a good picture (with house roof included for scale), https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/325834-using-two-night-vision-monoculars-as-a-binocular/ The meissa/angelfish Nebula is on Orions shoulders. Wait for the most transparent skies and check easier nebulae like the monkeyhead or Pac-Man. Sometimes it’s dark, but the nebulae don’t want to play. You night also want to swing down to the seagull in CMaj, be interesting to hear how people do! Peter

I have colleagues at work using the Formlabs High temp resin in several experiments. Each material will have its own personality and uses. Print settings and postcure (for SLA) May also be factors. Peter

Amazing time then! PEter