All dressed up & nothing to look at !!

[Purplehayze104]

Hi All

well finally got to round to attaching the Moonlite last nite after not having the tools to do the job i.e needle file which bought on way home from work tut (dad would be ashamed i've no tools but wot he don't know) spent about an hour or so of carefully filing down the original holes so i could get the screws for the adapter plate to fit in the predrilled holes & get it flush against the scope,

(ps excuse the bad flocking inside, was done a while back, trying to work inside a 6" scope & my inexperience it just became a nitemare on the cards for redoing thou)

the unit comes with 2 spacer plates to get unit the correct level for either visual or imaging, i bought the 38mm length tube which is better for imaging as less travel that has 3 big thumbscrews with compression ring to hold eyepeices etc nice & snug, there's also a nice 1.25" adapter for your smaller eyepeice's which has a nice embossed logo on it to with a single big thumbscrew & compression ring, both black anodised. cant say how smooth the focus knobs roll back & fourth so so much better than the standard unit i had & the 8:1 reduction knob, so smooth feels like its not attached to anything nice an chucky to for my fat fingers, has a nice shaft lock knob to tighten off once you've reached focus, you can tell this is a quality peice of kit this, colour prolly not to everyone's taste but thought why go subtle

After attaching the unit & tightening things up, the scope collimation was well out so spent half hour or more redoing that seemed easier this time as the moonlite had the compression ring to lock eyepeice's etc which centred the Cheshire better. To get camera to focus i needed to take the thinner of the 2 spacers out to get enuff inward travel to focus it, which in turn has produced a lil niggle where as now most of my eyepeice's have trouble reaching focus with the other spacer taken out, buuut with a big of playing worked it out my 32mm which is really my main eyepeice i use along with the 15mm if i pull the 1.25" eyepeice adapter out half way the 32mm will focus but have to pull the 15mm eyepeice out of that a bit to focus that nothing major thou. so now its a case now of waiting for first light to give it a spin along with the other recent purchase of a 2nd hand HEQ5 Pro, looking forward to the darker nights, now to see if my imaging will improve.....fingers crossed.

all dressed up with nowhere to go !

clear skies everyone

regards

john

[Davey-T]

Very nice John, must have doubled the value of the scope 

Dave

[Tinker1947]

One of these Baader extensions will be a worth while investmeny and allow the EP's to focus ok...

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/baader-2-inch-click-lock-cl-extension-47mm.html

[Purplehayze104]

haha seems funny having somthing costing more than the scope on it, but hey wot the heck, least it can transfer to others if i end up getting a bigger one at one point just need another adapter plate

thanks for the link tinker1947 hadnt thought of that good call, have to stick that on me christmas list

kind regards

john