Posts Made By: John Boyd

Well...a 9 year old has no trouble taking a Mead QX 36mm eyepiece apart, but this future Al Nagler is in the Meade phase of his development. He said he took them out in order, but got them all mixed up when he tried to put it back together. Can anyone give me some help with this one.

There is the field lens in a top spacer.
Thre is a 2 element convex lens about14mm thick (at the edge
There is a spacer 14mm thick
Thre is a convex/flat elememt 3mm thick (at the edge)
There is a 3mm spacer
Finally a convex/flat doublet 9mm thick at the edge.

If anyone has the seguence or a drawing of the assembly design, I would certainly appreciat some assistance on this one. I would like to say it is a great lens, but I never got the chance to try it. Thank you very much for any assistance provided.

John Boyd
Titusville, FL

Anthony,

I have used my FC-100 on the Super Polaris mount many times. I had the wooden legs but ended up putting the SP head on the Eliminator tripod from Astro Sky. I could not believe the difference. It removed about 80% of the focus shake. There is a large amount of flexture in crown of the standard tripod. The Eliminator uses a mini-pier setup and it adds significantly to the overall system. Really a nice setup. You can see the setup at

http://home.cfl.rr.com/jcboyd/index.html

The photo shows the SP with my FS-78 on it, but I also use it with the FC-100 when I do not want to go to the effort to drag out the G-11.

John

Keep after UPS. It is almost standard practice to deny the initial claim hoping people will just give up. I had a similar situation last year when they destroyed a Takahashi telescope. It took time, documentation, and legal threats, but they finally paid the seller for the damage. Keep in mind that the shipper is the holder of the insurance and he is the one that has to do the hollering. UPS just ignored me as the recipient. In fact they told me that other than providing access to the damaged item, I had no recourse.

Good Luck,

John

Cam,

Yes. TeleVue made a 1.8x and a 2.5x barlow for a long time.
It was not a Powermate.

John

Stuart,

I could not find any literature that listed the eye relief on the 24WF, however I would estimate it at about 10mm. It would not work very well if you have to wear glasses. I have one of the old 24s and it is still one of my favorite eyepieces.

John

David,

Interesting...I use my TV everbright inserted into the Tak compression ring 2 in adapter and with the 1.25 - 2 Adapter come to focus with all of my eyepieces including the 5.2 and 7 XLs and all of the Tak LEs. It is very close when using the TV hi hat adapter, but you pick up a comfortable amount of in focus with the new TV flat top adapter. Unfortunatly I can not use my CAA with the 2 inch adapter. That is frustrating because I love using the CAA to rotate the daigonal.

I forgot to mention that was on my FS-78. I do not have any problem with my FC-100 even with the CAA as long as I use the flat top adapter.

John

The flags here at KSC have been lowered to half-staff.

John

Ken,

Currently they have about 17 people from here at KSC and about 250 forest service personnel searching an area in New Mexico. Other than aircraft recon, there is no specific ground search any farther to the west.

For the latest official information check

http://www.nasa.gov/columbia/

There is also a very good ground track link there for those wanting to know the exact path of Columbia.

John

I really have no use for one. But like them anyway.

John

Karl,

A LOT....

I use one on my Super Polaris mount and a friend uses one on his CG5. I was amazed at the difference over my Vixen wood legs, and there was no comparison between the stock CG5 Aluminum legs.

One of the weaknesses of the traditional leg assembly is the tripod crown (the part the legs attach to). The Astrosky replaces the crown with a mini pier configuration. This eliminates almost all of the flexture in this area and contributes to a very stabile platform. It also provides solid legs which removes a lot of the individual leg flexture that exists in the extendable traditional legs.

Overall it reduces the dampening times considerably over the aluminum and even the stock wood tripods.

Hope that helps.

John