Posts Made By: Bill Byrd

W[COLOR="Purple"]e have lots of milkweed from the spring crop...man, that stuff grows like...a weed! Sooo we have a good crop of caterpillars too. In the spring we raised at least 4 to butterflies. Maybe we can get at least that many this fall. They are certainly fat and happy, judging by the caterpillar poop everywhere.
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[COLOR="Purple"]Here's two sharing a salad.
Bill[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Purple"]After using a regualr heat gun to heat the shrink on two of my 16 truss poles, I decided to go "old school". The heat gun was taking 20 minutes per pole. Clearly too slow with 14 more poles to go. Soooo...I brought out the antique camp stove and fired it up. Cuts time per pole down to under 10 minutes. If I were to get out the newer stove, I'm sure I could get that time down to 5 minutes but I'd be melting the poles as I went.
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[COLOR="Purple"]I had the 18.75" cellular mirror out of the scope tonight while I worked on the mirror box. Thought I'd post a pic since I haven't shown the whole thing here before. That's a 6" ruller in the right front of the pic for scale.
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[COLOR="Purple"]Hi!
Long time Paracorr user...just picked up a Baader MPCC for visual use...like the idea of correction without the 15% increase in magnification. Another plus is that it weighs less than the PC.

Any visual users fo the MPCC out there? How well does it perform? My scopes are f/4 to f/5.22.
Thanks!
Bill[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Purple"]I took Floyd's advice and picked up one of the Werner wide tread three step step stools. I wish it was 2" taller at the top step but overall, it should work fine. A plus I hadn't considered is that it folds to less than 3" thick so will take up less room when travelling.
Bill[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Purple"]In less than a week I head out with the newly/still being built scope for some time out in W TX under very dark skies. Things were just about done and I had already had one good night of observing which went well. Decent images from a secondary of unknown pedigree, although it had been in a scope used by a very good mirror maker so I wouldn't suspect it to be sub-par.

Anyway, I obtained a nice Antares secondary of known quality plus it was a smaller size more appropriate for the scope. So I siliconed the Antares mirror to the secondary holder and tried it out a couple of nights ago and to my surprise, there was a lot of astigmatism, aligned with the axes of the secondary. Hmmmmm....

I went back to the first diagonal and tried it tonight. The same astigmatism was there! Obviously something was not right. After racking my brains, and eliminating the primary and my eyes as the source, I was left with the inescapable fact that the astimatism was somehow originating with the secondary holder.

I decided the re-silicone the Antares secondary to the holder using 4 smallish globs of silicone instead of the 3 globs I had been using. I had to try something! :S While moving the tissues around in preparation for another siliconing, I discovered that a large paper clip had gotten under all of the tissues!! Doh!!! I had been setting the secondary mirror right on a paper clip and then attaching the holder to the mirror. I'm hoping, big time, that the paper clip had been causing strain in the mirror that was "built in" as the silicone cured.

The Antares secondary is now being attached again, with the mirror sitting nice and flat on a table top. I'll try it one more time tomorrow night in the scope. I sure hope that paper clip was the problem because I hate astigmatism with a passion and if I can't get this solved, the new scope stays behind on the upcoming trip and the trusty old scope will make the trip.
Fingers crossed,
Bill[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Purple"]Seems like the black bear is making a big comeback in Big Bend NP. This Momma and her two cubs were in the Basin camp ground last week.
Bill[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Purple"]I was in Big Bend NP last week. Glorious place to camp, star gaze and take pics. This is Casa Grande (Big House) as seen from my camp site.
Bill[/COLOR]

[COLOR="Purple"]Here's a pic of some Aoudad sheep I encountered in Guadalupe Mountains NP. There were about 20 in the "herd" and they stunk to high heaven! 8O
Bill[/COLOR]