My new dewbuster

[Ford Prefect]

Hi

Those of you who were at Kelling might have noticed the dew was quite bad on a couple of nights :shock: I myself had three 17ah battery packs that were being continually charged to keep my Kendrick dew controller working :shock: :shock: . Anyway as I was continuously changing battery packs I noticed the flashing disco lights of my good friend steveL dewbuster. I turn to him and say how many packs you got though, only one he replies. OMG, from that point on i was sold on the dewbuster.

For those of you that haven't heard of this great bit of kit they are built to order by a great bloke in the US called Ron. Further details can be found here http://www.dewbuster.com/

Anyway this is the first item for my new imaging setup, but more about that later!!!!! :lol:

[Talitha]

Looks familiar. Bought mine 3 years ago and I'd like to second your opinion of Ron Keating. He's one of the best people I've dealt with online... very nice Gent with an excellent product.

[SteveL]

An excellent product indeed... so much so that I am the proud owner of TWO Dewbusters (one for the EQ6, One for the NS8GPS). Here is mine on my NS8GPS rig earlier this year

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The 5 connectors on the left of the unit run at 50% duty cycle all the time, but the three on the right a regulated by the temperature probe that you place under your dewstrip on the primary OTA. This allows the dewbuster to know what temp the strip and OTA is, while the second extended sensor measures the ambient air temperature.

The suggested setting in the manual is to turn the dial on the front so that you have it pointing at the number of inches of aperture + 2. So my C8 points at 10, the 190mm (7.5") MakNewt roughly the same, and the C11 at 13. Being an American unit, the temperature is measured in fahrenheit, but works a treat. On slightly heavier dew nights, I will add 1 or 2 F to the dial to be sure, but have yet to see any dew on the primary or guiding OTAs whilst using my DewBuster units.

Quite hypnotic to watch the lights flashing away, and how they change over time as the feedback system adds more or less power to the dewstrips as required.

One other thing is that the DewBuster units will go into "battery saving mode" if it detects they are running low. It will not allow the batteries to run flat and get damaged. It will illuminate a yellow LED on the unit to show when this is happening, whilst at the same time, try its utmost to supply some power to the dewstrips as well.

Do I sound like a fan? Yes indeed! The DewBusters are only available from Ron's website, and he builds to order and soaktests each one before he sends them out. Well worth a look, and worth reading the instruction manual (PDF) for further information.

[ThedorAdorno]

Hi All,

(my first posting - so please go easy on me!!)

I had a dew-ruined evening on my first night out with my new Celestron CPC 800 - I had a dew shield but no heaters and so intend to buy the Dewbuster unit to stop the same thing happening time after time ...

my question is that as I intend to use the scope mostly out of my backyard and am running it via a 12v adaptor (bought from Harrison's Telescopes specifically for the job) + an extension cable off the mains electricity - what sort of adapter will I need to make the Dewbuster plug into one of the extension cable outlets?

From my browsing of the forums relatively few people seem to power their scopes from the mains, so most of the power source information for a Dewbuster seems to concentrate on power packs that I don't really intend to use (at least not in the near future).

This is what I think I need, am I wrong? -

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_storeId_10001_catalogId_10151_productId_785261_langId_-1_categoryId_165657

Thanks in advance for any advice,

very best,

Paul.