SteveA

Not sure why I wrote TP!

I meant APT😂😂😂
 

Dyslexia rules!

Thanks for this....

I'm feeling like a bit of a newbie at present, I've changed such a lot of stuff over the last few months and I see a steep learning curve coming.

I've changed from an EQ6 mount to iOptron, an Atik 314 to QHY268M (OAG and f/w) and also ditched TP in favour of NINA. Everything I contemplate involves a new process.

I have to admit to having not looked much beyond a set of LRGB filters for the new QYH filter wheel! My previous imaging was constrained by a 5 hole f/w and my entire nb imaging experience  was with an Ha filter. I might just take a little while on the filter selection now though. Just opting for Astronomik filters on the basis that I've used them before seems less than an objective decision.

CMOS imaging seems a little more involved than using a CCD but I'm hoping for good results.

Steve

I’ve not got my filters yet, but they will be the 36mm un-mounted.

This week has been expensive, on top of a new mount a couple of months back I’ve just bought a QHY268m camera, filter wheel and the OAG..couldn’t quite stretch to the filers as well unfortunately. To be honest though I think I’ll just bite the bullet and stick them on the credit card next month🧐. I was aiming to go for the Astronomik filters, I’ve had a 1.25” LRGB set from Astronomik for quite a few years and found them pretty good.

Despite having only just got the filter wheel it appears to have come with the original pads and screws for the filters although QHY have apparently started supplying their own masks as of Sept 23, clearly I’ve got slightly older stock. QHY are selling their own masks at 10 dollars, but I can’t see any U.K. suppliers selling them just yet, but I’ve  got some other Buckeyestargazer components and found them pretty well printed, so I’ll probably go with those.

Out of curiosity, which filters are you using?

Steve

Managed to get it open, a few sharp taps around the edge certainly got it moving.

Thanks for the advice

Steve

Hi Richard,

I’ll give that a try! I’ve tried jiggling it, twisting it and all sorts of levering actions between the case sides (avoiding the carousel) without luck.

It was just delivered yesterday and I’ve only just removed it from the box, so nothing attached yet. I was expecting the cover just to fall off without the screws in place🥴. I was quite surprised at how tightly the screws were tightened, so maybe that has generated the stick-toon you mentioned.

Steve

I’ve just taken delivery of a new QHY filter wheel. I’ve fallen at the first hurdle though! I don’t seem able to get the back off to access the carousel.

I’ve removed the 7 screws from the rear of the case, but the cover will not open up. Short of prizing open the case which I obviously don’t want to do in case of inflicting damage I’ve tried everything.

Should the case open easily? 
 

Steve
 

Its a sad state of affairs, but just for completeness here I go answering my own question.

Having now picked up a new CEM120 from FLO last week and I can answer the question with some authority!

The bolts are 22mm long.

Less than I thought they would to be honest!

Steve

I'm in the process of modifying my home built pier to accept a CEM120 mount. I've not ordered the mount yet and consequently don't have all the dimensions I need. I've got the overall dimensions of the base and the location of the M8 fixing bolts. What I don't know is the length of these bolts, ie.  how far they protrude beyond the mount base. I've yet to decide if I try and tap M8 threads in the aluminium  base I'm constructing or alternatively just drill straight through my base and secure the bolts with nuts. The second option is undoubtedly easier, but I do like making life difficult for myself.  Knowing the length of the fixing bolts would be helpful. 

Steve

Fantastic, that’s just what I needed…thanks.

Steve

I have a home made steel and concrete pier that I constructed for an EQ6 mount several years back. As I’m about to order a CEM120, I’m going to have to modify the pier to take the new mount. Can anyone tell me what the height of the CEM120 is, that’s the distance between the base of the mount and the centre of the saddle.

Steve

Thanks for your review and I look forward to hearing more as you get this mount outside and test under some clear skies.

I’m on the verge of upgrading from my 15 year  old EQ6 Pro, which I’ve seriously struggled with when loaded with a 250mm Quattro. On paper the EQ6 should cope with Quattro, but cameras, paraphernalia and it’s 1000m physical focal length have been a significant challenge in the guiding department😞. 
My finances just stretch to an EQ8, but clearly at £1k less the CQ350 clearly appeals. My gut says EQ8 which would easily cope with my setup, but if I could save a grand I would be seriously happy. I await your subsequent review…and thanks again.

Steve

Expensive but well engineered. I ordered a set for my 250 mm Quattro and was please if a little poorer!

http://www.parallaxinstruments.com/rings.html

Steve

Good to finally report some progress on this old thread. I really never expected to take quite so long to get this sorted, but very nearly three years on, I have.

To be honest I had pretty much given up on the whole idea as I couldn't find anywhere that could supply these and I didn't really know where to start getting some bespoke ones fabricated. But just a few weeks back now I found that Parallax Instruments in the USA do a massive range of tube rings including their 11.3" rings which are the exact size for the SW 250 OTA. 

Parallax Instruments, Inc. - Telescope Mounting Rings, Rotating Telescope Rings, and Tube Rings

I emailed Joe at Parallax and got a quote for the rings and shipping. Unfortunately they were quite pricey! The initial $310 dollars for the rings worked out to around £220 with the exchange rate, then there was an additional £50 for shipping. Parallax also quoted me for the cost of an ADM DUP15 dovetail, which I had intended to source in the UK, however this worked out marginally cheaper route, though I don't really think that with the shipping and duty I really saved anything on this to be honest.  All together I was looking at around £330, I mulled it over and almost pulled the plug as it did seem a lot to pay for tube rings, but in the end I obviously went ahead! 

Parallax use UPS for shipping. I've never really had any issues with UPS before, but on this occasion it was a bit of a mess. There was an eye watering £87 of import duty to pay, I knew there would be some duty to pay but I hadn't really banked on it being this much and to be honest I probably wouldn't have gone ahead if I had known how much this was going to be. This is where things got messy! I attempted to pay the duty online at the UPS site using PayPal, for some reason the transaction failed and I then attempted payment a second time using a credit card, but this failed as well and I got a message on the UPS site that the duty had already been paid? I double checked both my PayPal account and credit card transactions, but neither showed any activity. The UPS "Virtual Assistant on their website is worse than useless and so I resorted to contacting UPS by phone. My explanation of failed online payment transactions completely flummoxed them for some reason and all they wanted to do was take payment using my card on the phone. This in itself wasn't particularly problematic and I got an authorisation code that thankfully I kept a record of. The parcel took around a week to arrive in the UK and I watched its progress on line, worryingly though the tracking tool continued to show that the £87 import duty was still to be paid and I knew I was going to have problems. UPS do not give you any kind of time slot for delivery and I inevitably missed the UPS delivery as I was at work. Very weird stuff began happening at this point. I got a status update from UPS by email saying that I had refused delivery and didn't want the goods! When I got home I found the missed delivery card through the door which suggested they would try again the next day, but also showed £87 duty to pay. I tried entering the code off the card on the UPS site, but this was unrecognised. By this stage the status of the goods was "being held at UPS facility awaiting instructions and agreement".  So, I called UPS, and clearly again had to deal with operators in the USA, I explained the whole thing twice to two different people. In the end UPS did accept that payment had been taken and promised to update this. I also got them to change the delivery address to my workplace to avoid missing the delivery a second time. I got several status updates from UPS by email and it did seem that they hade actually managed to change the delivery address... but again the UPS site still showed that there was duty to pay. I had been keeping Joe at Parallax updated with all of this and he was quite surprised to hear of these issues. Later that evening however he mailed me to say that the "US government had called him, saying that my address and phone number were wrong and asked for my email address". A mild sense of panic ensued and I had visions of being deported to the states for some major infringement of US law, okay possibly a slight exaggeration, but at this stage I doubted I was ever going to get the damn tube rings at all! Quite what was going on was beyond me, it all seemed a real screw up.

The next day however, UPS turned up at work with the package. Of course they wanted the £87 again! However I had a copy of my credit card statement and a note of the authorisation code I had been issued with. The very reasonable driver accepted this and I am now the proud owner of a new set of tube rings.

The rings themselves are nicely made and finished. They are cast aluminium with a dark grey paint finish and felt lined. I've attached the ADM plate and the scope is now attached to my mount. I've a small issue with the vixen plate on the top of the OTA I use for power bar and USB hub, but that will require and additional hole for bolting to the top of the rings. 

I'm pretty pleased with these rings, they are rock solid on the mount with the bigger dove tail. Despite the cost I'm hoping they will be a good investment, though I could have done with out the UPS problems!

I've attached a few pics below..

Steve

You might be just on the edge of binding between the worm and the gear on which ever axis you are getting this noise on.

If this is the cause of the knocking noise, probably the best first step is to slacken off the the worm end float adjuster a bit, if you have the mesh well adjusted giving the worm a little extra room can alleviate possible binding. If that doesn't help you may need to adjust the worm/gear mesh.

Steve

32 minutes ago, Bukko said:

But please don't be jealous, this is the end of a long working career of stress and pressure culminating with the obligatory heart attack!! (Now much better)

Sorry to hear that work took such a toll. I quit the rat race 5 years ago now and haven't looked back despite a lack of spare time now that I'm running a small business with my wife.

again...good luck with this ambitious and extremely interesting project and I'm sure the results will definitely impress.

Steve

ps. I'm still jealous😬

Enormously impressed with your project Gordon and ever so slightly jealous as well!

I will look forward to seeing the end result....good luck.

Steve

I've lost count of the number of times I've jumped into a problem and ignored the basics in favour of a complicated reason behind a problem, so just a question here....

Have you checked the batteries are good and/or are making proper contact within the battery compartment? I could imagine a possible stop-start of the drive might produce some fairly erratic movements in this mount. 

Steve

The prospect of eliminating the play in my RA axis makes me very tempted to order this, though I think I may wait and see how any early adopters get on with this before taking the plunge.  I couldn't see any documentation on the site dealing with installation and adjustment which I think would be a useful read prior to ordering.

Steve

On 16/11/2018 at 16:07, wornish said:

The forecast is for clear skies tomorrow have you tried saying pretty please ?

 

My wife has what is called.....a "stubborn streak" ?

Well...finally I gave in!

Under extreme pressure from Mrs A, demanding ideas for this year's Christmas present I've opted for the Sesto Senso.

I would have liked to have at least had the opportunity to view the Baader offering, but it's been a year now since they talked about re-engineering their product and still nothing to look at. Unfortunately a potential  lost sale Mr Baader !!

Money is unfortunately an object around here and although I can think of plenty of pieces of kit I would dearly love,  I do need to be reasonable. Luckily the price of this sat nicely in the annual Christmas pressie budget. As has been the case in previous years, Mrs A passed me the heady responsibility of ordering my own pressie this year. 

Ordered on Saturday...delivered today (Thursday), all the way from Italia....super efficient and faultless service, though one wonders how Brexit will mess us all  up in the future ? (Opps..sorry for the political point of view...but what the hell)

Slightly unimpressed however...Mrs A has put her foot down!

No looking touching etc... etc. until  Dec 25th....damn  it!   ???

Steve

That is a possibility I guess. As you say the PrimaLuce rings are really rather expensive, especially when you consider the fact that a set of rings of this size from Skywatcher are only about £50. 

It seems to me that Synta are missing a trick here. Their latest mounts are equipped with dual Vixen/Losmandy clamps, but all their OTAs come with only a Vixen dovetail (I assume that statement is correct?). I know Synta have drawn criticism on certain aspects of their hardware over the years and in some cases have addressed these, strangely I've never heard complaints relating to mounting bars etc.

Steve

So...a wet Saturday afternoon and sitting at work slightly bored....always dangerous!

I got to thinking about mounting my F4 Quattro on a Losmandy style mounting plate.  I upgraded the EQ6 dovetail mounting clamp to an Altair dual Vixen/Losmandy clamp a while back and although this clamp is a seriously beefy bit of kit,  the Vixen/Synta dovetail seems fairly flimsy in comparison. It seemed like a fairly obvious thing to consider just replacing the standard dovetail with a nice wide and presumably more stable Losmandy plate. However, this doesn't seem as easy, possibly not even feasible with the Skywatcher tube rings, which are obviously designed for the standard dovetail. The attachment between the tube rings and the dovetail is on a remarkably small base and even if it were possible to attach these rings to a Losmandy plate, this small attachment base would likely not increase the stability of the mounting to any degree. So.....how about upgrading the tube rings? I almost had it when I stumbled across the Primaluce tube rings. Unfortunately....not available for tubes with 288mm OD! Very anoying as these would have been just right.

https://www.primalucelab.com/astronomy/250mm-plus-support-rings.html

So...the big question....Losmandy plate and a Skywatcher 250 Quattro...is it possible?

Steve

3 hours ago, misterp said:

I have a Primaluce electric focuser and think it’s great.

One thing I would like is a hand control unit so when doing visual I don’t need a pc

Ian

I'e yet to hear anything bad about this...I'm finding it increasingly tempting!

I think I will wait though until Baader release their replacement SteelDrive...just to try and make a comparison..

I have to say it hadn't occurred to me that there was no hand controller available with the Primaluce unit, not particularly an issue for me, but I do take your point...

Steve

Really stunning.......thanks for sharing.

Steve

1 hour ago, FLO said:

 we have added an additional one just above the videos just to be sure

Good call....thanks.

You knew it was a solar telescope and so did I....but to someone who was maybe slightly less well informed, it just looks like a regular small refractor (well almost).

Steve