Long and skinny!

[Marvin Jenkins]

As the title implies this is a frac at f15 which is an alien creature to me due to being a newt man. (Possible new super hero Newtman)😂

This Bushnells frac is not mine and will be returning to its owner, but it is need of a good clean and has some maintenance issues.

It is a 60mm aperture with an fl of 900mm. Ian going to do everything I can to get it properly working.

It comes with a few small eps and two of the most ridiculous barlows I have ever seen.

I have never used a slow frac and the mix of rescuing a scope like this is balanced by wanting to point it at the moon.

Marv

[Roy Challen]

That looks very similar to my first ever telescope.

[RobertI]

Looks like it’s designed to slice through atmosphere like a hypodermic syringe (I think that’s a mixed metaphor!) 🙂

[Marvin Jenkins]

Yes it is the javelin of fracs. It could not get more of an opposite to the newts I am used to. 
One of the clutch bolts has been broken off in the mount body. That is not an easy fix.

I will post up a few pics tomorrow as most of the work is cosmetic but I know the challenge is going to be very enjoyable.

Marv

[Marvin Jenkins]

51 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Looks like it’s designed to slice through atmosphere like a hypodermic syringe (I think that’s a mixed metaphor!) 🙂

Or as my friend called it A hypodemic nurdle. 🤣

[Marvin Jenkins]

[Marvin Jenkins]

That is the snapped off bolt.

[Roy Challen]

Found a photo, an actual paper one...from 2003-4.

Looks the same.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Roy Challen

[Marvin Jenkins]

Oh yeh that is the one, but this one has BUSHNELL written large down the ota in glow in the dark raised letters!!!

There are even glow in the dark stickers on the focuser knobs just so you know where they are🤣

[Roy Challen]

It is a Bushnell, the logo is on the other side! I bought it to look at Mars when it came closest to Earth. I recall the view was actually quite good but the mount wasn't much good.

Edited September 8, 2022 by Roy Challen

[Marvin Jenkins]

17 minutes ago, Roy Challen said:

It is a Bushnell, the logo is on the other side! I bought it to look at Mars when it came closest to Earth. I recall the view was actually quite good but the mount wasn't much good.

Mars! I must be missing something in the set up. My skies are clear so took it out to look at the moon, despite wanting to sort the mount out first.

Cannot focus on anything. Through the EP I can see the crap on the back of the lense or possibly the EP.

I removed the diagonal and looked up the OTA pirate style and the moon came to focus to my eye about 500mm after the focuser! What is going on?

I have zero experience with fracs but not being able to focus on the moon using all the focus draw in and out says something is wrong. Any ideas anyone?

[Louis D]

I wonder if there was an equally long and skinny extension tube that originally came with it?  You can locate the focus point by lining it up on the moon as you did before and then hold a thin, white sheet of paper behind the focuser, noting the distance where the image is sharpest on the paper.

[Louis D]

At 60mm and f/15, it should be basically apochromatic:

[Marvin Jenkins]

7 minutes ago, Louis D said:

I wonder if there was an equally long and skinny extension tube that originally came with it?  You can locate the focus point by lining it up on the moon as you did before and then hold a thin, white sheet of paper behind the focuser, noting the distance where the image is sharpest on the paper.

There are two extension tubes which would take the diagonal EP out where I think it is focusing, but both of these have lenses and are clearly marked as Barlows.

I will do a day time time test and see where the focal point is on a very distant object.

[Marvin Jenkins]

1 hour ago, Roy Challen said:

It is a Bushnell, the logo is on the other side! I bought it to look at Mars when it came closest to Earth. I recall the view was actually quite good but the mount wasn't much good.

 Could you get focus with the scope in that configuration?

[Roy Challen]

7 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

 Could you get focus with the scope in that configuration?

As far as I remember there were no issues with focusing.

[Marvin Jenkins]

I have been out with the hypodemic nurdle this afternoon and achieved focus on a telephone pole over 1km away. 
Even in broad daylight the image through the EP (20mm) was incredibly dull and dark. 
It does not help that focuser draw tube flops so there is a crescent of darkness around one side of fov. 
I have tightened the two little screws on the base of the focuser to the point where it is too tight to actually use the focus knobs and the flop is still there.

The view is so dark I actually removed the objective cell and focuser to see if there was some kind of physical obstruction! I have checked the mirror diagonal glass was the right way round and cleaned it, no better.

I looked through the finder scope and the view is so soft it is almost pointless.

I also tried the 1.5x Barlow tube in daylight and it drops the light level to the eye at the EP to almost darkness. It also comes with a 3x Barlow which is madness.

Does anyone out there think I have missed anything? Or is this thing absolutely rubbish and should have a coat hanging off it?

By the way, the Bushnells decals glow in the dark!!!!!😂

Marv

[Sunshine]

On 08/09/2022 at 12:18, Marvin Jenkins said:

As the title implies this is a frac at f15 which is an alien creature to me due to being a newt man. (Possible new super hero Newtman)😂

This Bushnells frac is not mine and will be returning to its owner, but it is need of a good clean and has some maintenance issues.

It is a 60mm aperture with an fl of 900mm. Ian going to do everything I can to get it properly working.

It comes with a few small eps and two of the most ridiculous barlows I have ever seen.

I have never used a slow frac and the mix of rescuing a scope like this is balanced by wanting to point it at the moon.

Marv

My eyes kept going to that beautiful wall, I love it! this is inside your home? beautiful.

[Marvin Jenkins]

34 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

My eyes kept going to that beautiful wall, I love it! this is inside your home? beautiful.

Thank you for the compliment, it is inside my house. I live the Quercy Blanc region and all the stone in this region is white limestone, a left over from a shallow tropical evaporitic sea.

My house is an old stone cow barn that I have rebuilt over ten years. 
Oddly this building and the couple of others around it were once a Friary.

There is a castle up the road that once owned by Richard the Lion Heart and his houses stonework is much more impressive😂

Marv

[Sunshine]

24 minutes ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Thank you for the compliment, it is inside my house. I live the Quercy Blanc region and all the stone in this region is white limestone, a left over from a shallow tropical evaporitic sea.

My house is an old stone cow barn that I have rebuilt over ten years. 
Oddly this building and the couple of others around it were once a Friary.

There is a castle up the road that once owned by Richard the Lion Heart and his houses stonework is much more impressive😂

Marv

Sounds like a dream!

[Marvin Jenkins]

59 minutes ago, Sunshine said:

Sounds like a dream!

Sometimes more like an hallucination. The amount of work to get to this has been mind bending.

I look back occasionally (even though Liam Gallagher said don’t do that) and think a caravan in a field would have been a wiser decision.

[Louis D]

4 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Thank you for the compliment, it is inside my house. I live the Quercy Blanc region and all the stone in this region is white limestone, a left over from a shallow tropical evaporitic sea.

Same here in our part of Texas.  Locally quarried white limestone from an ancient inland seabed is a very popular as an exterior cladding:

[Louis D]

5 hours ago, Marvin Jenkins said:

Even in broad daylight the image through the EP (20mm) was incredibly dull and dark.

Well, you are working with a 1.3mm exit pupil, which is fairly small, but certainly not very small.  Try looking at the aerial image without an eyepiece as you did before and see how dim the telephone pole looks.

I just had a funny thought.  The upcoming generation of kids will one day ask why they're called telephone poles when they mostly carry electricity or perhaps broadband lines.  It's funny to see them try to dial a rotary phone in a period school play.  My daughter was doing just that 10 years back in a high school play.  She dialed the number and then picked up the receiver!  Us oldies in the audience stifled our chortles as best as we could.

[Mandy D]

11 hours ago, Louis D said:

I just had a funny thought.  The upcoming generation of kids will one day ask why they're called telephone poles when they mostly carry electricity or perhaps broadband lines.  It's funny to see them try to dial a rotary phone in a period school play.  My daughter was doing just that 10 years back in a high school play.  She dialed the number and then picked up the receiver!  Us oldies in the audience stifled our chortles as best as we could.

It happened back in the seventies, too. I had a school friend do exactly the same when using a telephone for the very first time! I also never understood why the handset was always referred to as a "receiver", when it both transmits and receives: Surely "transceiver" would make more sense! We also referred to telephone poles as "telegraph" poles.

Why did the teacher not correct this error in rehersals? I can only guess they were also too young to have experience of rotary dial phones.

[maw lod qan]

11 hours ago, Louis D said:

I just had a funny thought.  The upcoming generation of kids will one day ask why they're called telephone poles when they mostly carry electricity or perhaps broadband lines.  It's funny to see them try to dial a rotary phone in a period school play.  My daughter was doing just that 10 years back in a high school play.  She dialed the number and then picked up the receiver!  Us oldies in the audience stifled our chortles as best as we could.

In time it will not be the younger generation. 

Remember Scotty sitting down at the computer on the movie "the voyage home" about to trade the formula for transparent aluminum for plexiglass. 

"Computer. Computer! The keyboard, how quaint!"