Nightmare night

[martin_h]

Why is is that when things go wrong they go wrong in a big fashion?

A couple of weeks ago my RDF fell off the scope, I park it on its side and the weight of the RDF pulled it off the sticky pads. No problem I'll put it back on one day when I can find some more sticky pads, I'm obs based so all my alignment points are saved so I dont realy need it in a hurry....... Ho Hum:mad:

Last night I unparked the scope, like I said its parked on its side and un-parked is weights down scope up at polaris - like most peoples parked position. Well last night it decided that unparked would be weights West and scope looking at the ground!

So after a moment of panic and scratching of head decided to delete all saved data and start again, new home position, new unparked position, new alignment points, wont take long I thought................

No RDF !!!! still havn't got round to the sticky pads, never mind I have a finder that came with the scope somewhere, never used!

So smack it on the scope and away we go, only took 15 mins to sort out how you focus the ruddy thing and now I've got to align it to a star....well thats a laugh everythings back to front

And how do people look through those things anyway? My legs are still cramped up now

Well to cut things short all is well in the obs, after re-aligning by cloud dodging everything seems back to normal and after several parks and unparks and umpteen gotos averything seems to be back in place.

Except the RDF.........now where are the sticky pads?

[Earl]

Personally i don't like them a 9x50 finder works much better for me.

Im going to realign with my DSLR next clear night.

[acey]

well thats a laugh everythings back to front

Commiserations, and you're right, sometimes everything decides to go wrong.

But I'm another person who prefers a traditional finder to RDF. The view isn't back-to-front, it's upside down - exactly the same as the orientation seen through the main scope (assuming it's a Newtonian). So you just turn your map to suit. If the scope is a refractor with mirror diagonal then it's the main scope that has a back-to-front view, so star-hopping by map is far more easily done with the finder.

I collimate my scope every time I use it, therefore also need to align the finder. Takes a few seconds once you're used to it, and the focus never needs touching once it's set. A tip for aligning the finder is to use a terrestrial light (e.g. distant street light), or Polaris, since either won't move across the FOV.

[martin_h]

My scope has a CCD bolted on the pointy end so that makes it a tad harder, and just to add to the fun, I have 3 scopes on the mount and the one with the CCD I was using to align with I couldn't get to the finder shoe because the focus knob of another scope was in the way!!!!! So I had to mount it on the other scope and hope there was enough adjustment to get them aligned - there was!

It all just adds to the fun of this hobby/obsession