CPC 1100 - First thoughts.

[Northern Soul man]

Hi to all, had the cpc 1100 for a few days now and thought I'd post my thoughts.

Ordered some thumb screws to replace the secondary ones, fitted - ok (a little un - nerving - got the Fastar secondary on the cpc, undone the first screw and the whole secondary assembly felt really loose - replaced with the thumb screw - same with the other 2 went really loose but tightened ok. Collimated on the first night on a star - followed Ed's collimation - Astromart Articles - Ed's Guide to SCT Collimation - after reading through a few times - seemed pretty straight forward.

OTA is quite heavy to move around with - but holding close to the body and bending by your knees and not your back works for me.

Setting up was quick and easy - switch on and I think you need to do a sky allign to access the GPS function - a little hit and miss - incorrect date was showing - only time will tell. A 2 star auto align went fine.

Optically - when collimated - very nice - had a quick run through all the Messier's in Ursa Major (nice and high/overhead) and as mentioned the 2 star auto align, every galaxy was near to the centre and visible in a 40mm plossl.

Wasn't expecting too much from Saturn - low down - but pleasantly surprised - banding on the surface, but the Atmosphere was winning here.

I'm in for a long ride with the cpc 1100 - yes I know - an SCT - not to everyone's taste, but visually, very nice - even in the very light polluted West Midlands - enough light grasp for me to grab fainter fuzzies than I'm used to.

A little more trial and error, a few filters to try on deep sky and the planets, but very pleased with my initial trials and after observing for many years with different scopes, I think that the cpc is a fantastic 11 inch SCT, and I think we all know the pro's and con's of different types of scopes, but an excellent all rounder for me visually and I've now got the rest of my life to enjoy it. Cheers Paul.

[ollypenrice]

I have a visiting C11 at the moment and had a look at M51 through it from our dark site. Very impressive! Really very, very impressive. This one was bought damaged, for a song, and has a home made corrector plate and secondary but when I say 'home made' the owner is a professional optical engineer. As yet the corrector isn't coated so it is losing about 6% to reflections but even so M51 could fill the EP and show clear spiral structure.

Our guest actually has two of these rescued C11s and the bits to work them as binoculars. When it stops raining this promises to be rather exciting!!!

Olly

[Dellis]

When it comes to the GPS just turn the scope on and wait for the correct date and time to appear (this may take a couple of minutes), when you first turn it on it will show the date and time when it was last turned off. Three star alignment never failed for me with both GoTo and tracking working very well.

Dave - an ex CPC1100 owner

[Merlin66]

I'm more than happy with my C11 OTA for spectroscopy...sits well on the NEQ6pro.

[Stephen]

Our guest actually has two of these rescued C11s and the bits to work them as binoculars. When it stops raining this promises to be rather exciting!!!

Olly

Wow!

[faulksy]

congrats on your scope i only have the baby one, as said just switch on and leave it will correct it self i always switch on and leave for around 30 mins whilst it is cooling. reccomend 2" diagonal well worth doing

[Northern Soul man]

Hi To All, thanks for the comments, don't think there's much between the 925 and the 11 to be honest - so opted for the 11.

Very impressed with it from my light polluted skies I think with the aperture I can start looking for the fainter galaxies than I'm used to "seeing" and trying filters, I have 2, the uhc s from Baader and a uhc 2" castelli.

Collimation was easy after fitting the knobs, but scary when the whole secondary mirror assembly "loosened up" - but as I think many of us spend more time worrying about collimation than actually observing - but looking at the whole picture I think its best to get it "near" enough because I think the atmosphere will do more harm than the accuracy of mirror alignment.

WOW Olly - I thought my bi - focals are big but c11 Binos!!!

I have a 2" WO Dielectric which I used with the LX90 and a rather expensive (I think) heater/dewshield which works fine.

Thanks for the tips on GPS - I was worried because I observe quite near to the house (with the lights off) and thought that I may not be able to let the GPS access all satellites due to the scope being near the house and obscuring the link up.

Once again thanks to all just waiting for the clouds to move. Cheers Paul.

[faulksy]

your more than welcome

[AztecastroMcJ]

nice report and welcome aboard 11" sct club

[Andymarrison]

Hoping for First Light on my baby CPC (8") tonight after it arrived on Friday, my first scope, accompanied by the obligatory four days of cloud cover and rain. Tonight looks promising... Will make good use of the tips in the thread re GPS - it would have taken me ages to work it out!

[Dunkster]

Wot no drool icon

[Northern Soul man]

Yes, Andy - Its great when you get a new scope and I think there's always a little time needed to get to grips with it, used a few scopes in my time and have found with all of them there is a period where different scopes bring up different challenges.

I was worried about changing the collimation screws and when I undone the first screw the whole assembly loosened - all the blogs say to change 1 at a time - but managed to get the new thumb screws in ok - then worried about collimation but found the article mentioned earlier really helpful.

I've had a couple of nights observing with it, and really pleased with the whole set up and collimation looks near enough as I can see, Mars wasn't good - very poor seeing (too close to my roof). Saturn was only just above the roof tops - but very nice - hints of the Cassini division, but, being able to push the mag a little more, I could see the darker banding on the northern hemisphere - more distinct in any of my previous scopes.

Wasn't expecting much when I punched in a constellation tour of Virgo's messier galaxies - but found all the M galaxies (except M100 I think)- very distinct due to the increase contrast even without any filtering.

So even after only a couple of nights and it being an SCT (for the DSO's) well pleased and visually very nice - so now the fun starts - put a few bitmaps of the constellations on my phone so as not to bother setting up the laptop - the hunt BEGINS.

Oh and Dunkster - changed the icon now.

Thanks to all for your comments - many more late nights to come. Cheers Paul.

[Dunkster]

LOL, I meant I couldn't find the drool icon wanted to put lots of them

Looks a beaut! I'm torn between a C11 and dob, feeling less torn now

[Northern Soul man]

Yeah, I had a 12" F5 dob, but tended to use the LX90 I had more than the dob - I know - more people would probably use the dob - easier set up - but comparing the FOV to the SCT -was a little bigger - but observing from where I live (light polluted) and not having the best skies - the outer parts of galaxies - such as dust lanes - just aren't visible to me - but I punched M3 into the handset, with the 21mm Hyperion - really nice - wonderful object, thought wonder if I increase mag, so put the 5mm Hyperion in (x560)- and WOW - outer reaches of the globular really well defined, also going in towards the core - maybe 70 - 80% resolved, just thought wonder what omega centauri would be like.

[Dunkster]

Does the OTA detach from the fork for carrying? I see there are handles on the side

To be realistic, I think a C11 is probably a bit overkill for me in LP land

[Jammy]

Congrats on your scope!!

I have a C9.25 and I love it. I'm sure yours is even better

[Northern Soul man]

Hi Dunkster, no the OTA and forks are 1 unit, but manageable and set up time is really quick, the way you carry the scope is sort of tucked into your belly and just place it onto the centre pin on the tripod, rotate to lock into the recesses, tighten 3 bolts and your done.

Hi Jamie nice 1 on the 925, I sold 2 scopes to part fund my scope, so went for the 1100 while I'd got the cash, its gotta last me a number of years now.

Cheers Guys. Paul.

[cfpendock]

Congratulations on your new telescope. I found the same GPS problems - after two hours the scope still didn't realise it was no longer in California. Having manually told it that Europe is different, now it's fine. Have Celestron moved into the 21st century yet and supplied a USB connection rather than the RS232 for your scope?

On another matter, with your dew shield you should be ok with balancing, depending on what you intend to hang on the other end. Otherwise I would be interested to hear how you intend balancing it. All the commercial stuff (ADM, Starizona etc) seems unbelievably expensive. Or perhaps the value of metal weights has gone up more than I thought.....

[ukskies]

That's a lovely scope and no mistake you are very lucky, I really would love to get one myself but will have to save for a bit longer as things stand.

Hope you enjoy your future viewing with it.

[Dunkster]

Hi Dunkster, no the OTA and forks are 1 unit, but manageable and set up time is really quick, the way you carry the scope is sort of tucked into your belly and just place it onto the centre pin on the tripod, rotate to lock into the recesses, tighten 3 bolts and your done.

Thanks Paul - you make it sound too easy and too tempting :drool:

[brantuk]

I love the CPC range of scopes - so far I have owned an 800 and now have the 925. When I get somewhere to have a permanent set up I'll probably pier mount an 1100. I find 20 mins is more than enough to lock onto 3 satellites and prime the gps - followed by a quick 3 star align and off you go. Superb tracking and beautiful optics. Very nice scope - congrats NSM

[Northern Soul man]

Hi, Thanks to all, not thought about balancing yet, I have the 2" diagonal and using hyperions on the back and just the dew shield on the front - so probably un balanced at the moment, where I observe is not ideal, very close to the house so satellites may be a problem - but the last session went very well, GOTO is very accurate on a 2 star auto align - just a point, put M3 into the handset, with low power - very bright, distinct, increased the mag to over 500 and WOW stars resolved to maybe 70 - 80% towards the centre.

Cfpendock - still the same cables with no usb as yet, all the balancing accessories are really expensive as you say so have to have a look next set up, and yes Brantuk - really pleased, I have no interest in imaging - so purely visual for me, the SCT, I think is a popular option and if you understand and realise what you can expect from just visual astronomy and don't expect to "see" what the imagers are producing then your left with a very competant instrument that will last a lifetime. Thanks Paul

[kirkster501]

Congrats and welcome to CPC world. I love mine - super piece of kit.

[Andymarrison]

After driving my wife to distraction constantly checking the weather forecasts, it looks finally as if tomorrow night is going to be a clear and cold one! So I'll finally get to look though the scope instead of watching sat sadly in the corner like a very ugly and expensive paperweight. I did have a experimental set up under cloudy skies and had the same problem as cfpendock reports with the scope thinking it's in California (I wish!). How do I change this? Can't seem to access any of the menus because, I guess, I have to go through one of the align options first? Help, anyone? Thanks! Andy

[cfpendock]

After driving my wife to distraction constantly checking the weather forecasts, it looks finally as if tomorrow night is going to be a clear and cold one! So I'll finally get to look though the scope instead of watching sat sadly in the corner like a very ugly and expensive paperweight. I did have a experimental set up under cloudy skies and had the same problem as cfpendock reports with the scope thinking it's in California (I wish!). How do I change this? Can't seem to access any of the menus because, I guess, I have to go through one of the align options first? Help, anyone? Thanks! Andy

Hi Andy. Yes you are right - choose SkyAlign and then press undo to edit - then you can input your approximate lat and long, date and time. Do it outside where the scope can see some satellites (not today maybe), and within a couple of minutes it should correct itself. Otherwise you can select scope setup from the menu, and choose setup time-site. Hope this helps.