Came home tonight and the skies were clear, so I hauled out the 8 inch F-9 reflector I have been building this last week. I bought the mirror, diag, spider, focuser, and cell here about 2 weeks ago (Thanks Al!)found some 10 inch Sono tube, some alumimum tubing and fitted it all together. Took it out and put it on Juipter. Couldn't get it to focuse. With the focuser racked out all the way, I wound up pulling the eye piece out about 6 inches to get focuse. I got a nice view of Juipter and it's moons and could make out a few bands using an old 25mm SMA e/p. I ran the numbers thrue Newt for windows and for a F-9 the distance between the face of the mirror and the focuser hole is 63.625 inches. But if I had to pull the e/p out 6 inches to get focus, then I'm thinking the mirror is about an F-10, not an F-9. The man I bought I from wasn't sure, it was an estate sale and not his. So off I go to ACO to but 4 more alumimum tubes. The last ones I bought were 72 inches long and I cut off 7 1/2 inches to get the 63.75 distance between the mirror and the focuser hole. I'll leave the new ones at 72 inches and try it again. I figure that should put me in the center of the focuser travel. Still with the sono tube, mirror, cell, focuser, spider, 1.83 diag, and 8x50 finder the whole package comes in at around 22 pounds. I still have to build a rocker box for it, but I'm going to keep it small and low. Maybe I'll post a pic when it's not so ugly!
Roger
Roger
