Skywatcher Skyliner 300p Flextube Auto

[russ.will]

Not against Go To as such Russell - in fact I've set up a Push to solution on my own 8 Inch - just get more of a rush when I find things myself really. Each to his own and I can see lots of advantages to go to - cracking looking scope though - we've got clear skies outside now might pop out for an hour or two = looking forward to your first light report with the new addition

Clear Skies

Steve

The cloud cleared here too, shortly after I replied earlier. Seeing was a bit fuzzy, to put it mildly, with the skyglow of outlying villages reaching farther up, on the back of airborne moisture, than I'd like. There was zero chance of that stopping me!

At that point, I realised that I'd never had an AZ scope before, much less a tracking one, so I ought to at least scan an AZ Auto manual. Setup (Point North, point horizontal, set latitude) takes less than a minute, which combined with a couple of minutes to actually get the thing outside, leaves the cool down time as comfortably the biggest issue. My HEQ5 Pro Synscan/200p might have taken longer to setup, but it took less time to actually produce a stable view, from the moment you decide to go outside. I may have to look into fan assisted cooling.

The next thing I remembered, was why I dumped the straight through 9x50 SW finder the last time I had one. It's not bad optically, but it is a neck breaker and after the multi reticule RDF I had, it's like trying to find things down a toilet roll. FLO cannot come up with the Rigel Quickfinder I ordered (shown as in stock, but not) quick enough, that's for sure. Seeing precluded any real DSO jollies, but Saturn looked crisp, with rare stable moments showing faint banding and a clear view of the Cassini Division in the 8mm TMB. Other than that, I mostly just checked collimation on Vega.

Whilst reassembling the top part of the tube earlier, I noted that I couldn't get the secondary high enough up the tube to entirely centre it under the Cheshire. I could just about get the entire primary in view with the primary clips all showing, but not dead centre in the secondary. Vega seemed perfectly round in and outside of focus, with the clips perfectly symmetrical in the defocussed image, so is this just a a vagary of having an offset secondary?

By the way, the reassembly was because I flocked the top part of the tube and wanted to remove the pointless rubber stops that let dust in and add about an inch and a half, to the retracted height of the OTA. Not much, but enough to stop me transporting the OTA in the most space efficient way required, if it is to have any hope of travelling with the other two members of my family. It now only takes up one seat in the car.

[rory]

hopefully they'll be better skies at sometime this week. look foaward to a report.

[scarp15]

What car is it? The base won't fit in the boot of my Ford Kuga and that is a less than compact car.

Russell

I currently drive a Skoda Fabia, roomy compared to my previous Nissan Micra, guess its in the upper leaque of 'compact'. When I get round to taking it to a darker location, there will be just me, no family involved, so I place the OTA across the back seat, cradled in some of the package foam for extra support.

[russ.will]

Okay. It fits easily in the Kuga like that too, but I wanted to be able to take it away as a 'fourth' family member! With it's, now more compact, tube length of 900mm, it is exactly equal to the seat to roof distance. The weight causes it to sink into the seat by a centimetre or three, so now it fits just peachy.

I may have to 'flat pack' the base if we deign to take luggage though...

Russell

[scarp15]

Yes I have been able to fit the ota into the front passenger seat with the seat slightly declined, so it is feasible to include passengers, and whilst the base is bulky, I guess soft baggage could be fitted within the interior. I have been on family camping trips where the scope has become the 'fourth member' just, although not the 300p flextube so far, that to me, is of a different order, if camping perhaps a trailer might be handy!

[Mike73]

if camping perhaps a trailer might be handy!

Some nice cushions in the trailer and the family could pretend they were in a soft top!

[russ.will]

Right. This scope is very much a game of two halves.

The good half is that the OTA shows my old 200p a clean pair of heals in every respect.

The mount on the other hand is, as it comes from the box, basically in danger of drawing the attention of the Trade Descriptions Act. Go to? Go somewhere. The issues seem, as indeed they were with my HEQ5 Pro, to be of the assembly quality type, rather than issues with the components themselves.

In the Alt axis, there is nearly two degrees of slop, but at least the travel is smooth. In the Az axis, there is less slop, but the axis is so tight, that it sounds laboured like a cordless drill with dying batteries. Unless you turn it through 180 degrees in which case it sounds like it's going to run away with itself. Something is not centred, clearly. Thus, depending upon where you are in the rotation a GOTO instruction either over shoots, or undershoots to a massive degree. Not impressive. Even manually slewing the thing to approximately the right area to give it a head start, doesn't really help.

So in an effort to improve matters and having had a look over Dr. Robins thread, I decided to take it apart and give it all the once over. Has it improved things? No idea and nor will I for a while. You see, whilst carrying this all out, I also mounted a SkyFi unit on the base. However, in a moment of blind stupidity I picked up the wrong RJ12 connector and plugged it directly into the base, a duty that should be reserved for the Synscan handset. Result? One fried mother board.

I'll bet these don't turn up next day.

Russell

[russ.will]

Right. This scope is very much a game of two halves.

The good half is that the OTA shows my old 200p a clean pair of heals in every respect.

The mount on the other hand is, as it comes from the box, basically in danger of drawing the attention of the Trade Descriptions Act. Go to? Go somewhere. The issues seem, as indeed they were with my HEQ5 Pro, to be of the assembly quality type, rather than issues with the components themselves.

In the Alt axis, there is nearly two degrees of slop, but at least the travel is smooth. In the Az axis, there is less slop, but the axis is so tight, that it sounds laboured like a cordless drill with dying batteries. Unless you turn it through 180 degrees in which case it sounds like it's going to run away with itself. Something is not centred, clearly. Thus, depending upon where you are in the rotation a GOTO instruction either over shoots, or undershoots to a massive degree. Not impressive. Even manually slewing the thing to approximately the right area to give it a head start, doesn't really help.

So in an effort to improve matters and having had a look over Dr. Robins thread, I decided to take it apart and give it all the once over. Has it improved things? No idea and nor will I for a while. You see, whilst carrying this all out, I also mounted a SkyFi unit on the base. However, in a moment of blind stupidity I picked up the wrong RJ12 connector and plugged it directly into the base, a duty that should be reserved for the Synscan handset. Result? One fried mother board.

I'll bet these don't turn up next day.

Russell

[russ.will]

Okay. A little over two weeks ago OVL finally fronted up a new motherboard. If we ignore the delay, then the £55 it cost was reasonable and the fact that they despactched it upon receipt of a cheque, without waiting for it to clear, even more so. We're back up and running.

In the interim two months, I decided push to can't be all that hard and printed a 360 degree azimuth scale for the base board. £26 for a Wixey and we're off. Brilliant. I can't believe I doubted the simple solution could be so, err? Simple! Skysafari shows you were with precise, time corrected coordinates and the Rigel QF, plus standard 8x50 finder make finding stuff a breeze once the Wixey and azimuth scale get you in the right area. With the GOTO motors removed and attention paid to the tension of the bearings, nudging is pretty smooth and manual tracking easy. I love it.

With the arrival of the motherboard, I regress to GOTO operation. The time spent on the bearing pressure seems well spent as slewing in all directions is more consistent, even if the slop seems as bad as ever. Note to self - Must take time to set up the back lash adjustment on the Synscan hand controller. Even so, GOTO operation is proving close enough and tracking is pretty good. The ES 82deg 18mm means near misses are nearer than the outgoing BST Explorers, the extra FOV and the sharpness near the edges, finding faint fuzzies that got lost in the peripheral murk of the 32mm Panaview previously used as a finder EP.

Now the bad.

Why, oh why doesn't a scope that relies on accurate levelling come with adjustable feet? Set it up, get it level and then the sod settles into the lawn over the evening, throwing out all of your hard work. Talk about for the want of a ha'porth of tar.

Why should I have to take the swine apart to adjust the bearing tension? It's no biggy for me, but how many people (not brought up rebuilding two stroke engines) give up, when faced with a technical task beyond their ken? For £1k, these scopes really should be better screwed together.

Finally, I bought a SkyFi as I have an iPad. I thought it would be nice for those family evenings so we could sit around and I could let the kids/parents/in-laws/friends have a prod around from the comfort of a graphic interface. Except, it has resolutely refused to work anywhere except in my living room and is now showing the red light of death. Oh, good. Another epic fail in the pantheon of amature astronomical gear.

All I can say is I'm glad this is all during the summer and that the weather has conspired with the light nights to restrict viewing. Had this been autumn/winter the planned crowds would all have been here to witness the half baked nature of my purchases.

Still, tomorrow is another day and I'll be back to looking at the weather forecasts in anticipation.

Russell

[estwing]

good luck Russ you don't need anymore bad things to happen!..ahhh the simple dob..

[russ.will]

Quite. It seems to be a product that's failings are due to the added complexity. The simple bits are hard to fault.

Russell

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD using chubby fingers. Sorry.

[russ.will]

I thought I'd add some photo's of the laminated Azimuth scale that has replaced the original paper one.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD using chubby fingers. Sorry.

[russ.will]

December 19th 2012 - Still waiting for the replacement SkyFi unit. Due mid January according to Southern Stars. Apparently their supplier shipped the next batch to the wrong country or some such, blah, blah, blah....

It's only a peripheral, but yet again, it's another example of how half baked some products and their support is. I mean, I buy products from all over the world in my job and they always end up in the right country, if not always quite on time. A week or two at worst, but the SkyFi is pushing five months now.

Russell

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Its amazing how big they can get! Sure it will be worth it tho!

[Corkeyno2]

On ‎21‎/‎05‎/‎2012 at 21:27, russ.will said:

It's not a GOTO - It's an Auto, which stands for Auto tracking. You still have to find stuff, but once found, it stays put in the FOV for longer. There is no downside to that idea.

That said, I have picked up a Synscan handset. Nudging a Dob is not a spectator sport and when the extended family is round, just wanting to see stuff, GOTO is jolly handy.

Russell

Whenever I have a distant relation round, they just expect to see Hubble quality images. My friend actually, thought he was going to see alien colonies on the moon, no joke! People seem to be disappointed when looking through my 4 inch refractor, because of high expectations. This is why I think people should view the sky first time realistically, and this applies to other things as well.  

[wesdon1]

Russ.will--That's a HUGE scope my friend!! Mines only 130mm Aperture, so i can only imagine how amazing the veiws are through that 300mm Behemoth!?? Amazing! I'm really Jealous! ( In the nicest way possible sir! haha )