General Care of Equipment

[Hightower]

Ok, so after my first real dew up over the weekend, it got me wondering. How do you guys generally care for your equipment?

1) How do you clean your equipment, including eye pieces?

2) How do you store your eye pieces whilst out - i.e. if you change your eye piece in the scope, do you rest the old one in a tray, or put the caps back on and place it in the box, or what?

3) Once you get back home, how do you leave the bits of dew on the eye pieces - do you leave them capped and in their home so they can sort themselves out, remove the caps so they have a chance to dry out, or something else?

Thanks,

[Qualia]

I live in Spain, so my enemy isn't the damp or high humdity but dust.

1) I use a little pear-shaped blower thing. You can pick them up for a quid or so at the local chemist and this blows of the dust and eyelashes. If the eyepieces are really bad, I've got the Baader Optical Wonder Cloth and the Baader Optical Wonder Fluid. I've seen some pens around with carbon at one end and a little brush at the other which buff up the lenses but I can't see much point in them myself.

2) My advice is to get yourself an eyepiece case (you can pick up one up new for about €20/€30), they look cool and make it easier to lug around your stuff. Whilst out, the eyepieces generally end up in my tray. That way I can flip through them without fafffing about. If I remember, I cap them, but not always.

3) Once home, I have a little inspection. Usually the scope and eyepieces are just fine. I personally feel that it is better not to be cleaning too much. Certainly with my frac, I'm not going to get anywhere near the main lense. I give the scope a little rub down and kiss. If I notice some dust or eyelashes on my eyepieces, I give them a little blow with the blower thing. If they're really, really bad I resort to the fluid and cloth as last resort.

Hope that helps.

Qualia

[kenmyers]

1. Compressed air.

2. pick my focal lengths for the night, put them in the tray, pop them in and out of the focuser(unused go back in the tray) and when I am done I put them all back in cases.

3. I put them straight in the caps and they seem to sort themselfs out just fine... but I keep them in a very cool garage, this must help.