Posts Made By: Philip Godfrey

Hey guys,

Had a quick question.

The 12" LX200 that I'm rebuilding has a fairly dirty corrector plate with stains that appear to be condensation left over from a night of viewing and never cleaned off.

In an ideal world, is it likely that I can send JUST the corrector (and secondary) with primary to Meade to have cleaned and recoated or are they not interested in doing so. If they don't offer that service, who does? I'd like to have the corrector stripped and recoated. I'm sending the OTA out for powder coating shortly and figured I'd do something about the optics while that's being done.

Suggestions?


Thank you, as always,


Phil

Yet again, I have another question regarding my 12" LX200.


I am sending the tube out to be powder coated in a week or so but I can't for the life of me remove the rear or front cell.

Optics are all out, screws are all out...I've tried heating it with a heat gun but that didn't work. I tried working it out with a plastic mallet and that didn't work.

I am assuming that Meade has put some type of bonder between these fittings.

It's just about an inch or so larger than my oven so I can't put it in there to heat it up. I'm not going to use a blow torch.

Help!


Thanks again,

Phil

Are the castings (both tripod and forks/drive base) powder coated or painted?


Thanks,

Phil

I'm looking for a baffle tube for the 12" LX200 classic model. Not the entire OTA or rear cell - just the baffle tube. If that is not an option, I'm open to the OTA.

If anyone has a very broken 12" OTA I'm interested. I don't need the mirror, corrector or even the blue tube. I just need the rear cell and baffle tube to be intact. By "intact" I mean not screwed up at all.

The one that WAS attached to my rear cell was bent and flat in one area. The rear cell was baked at 800 degrees to burn off the adhesive and that still wasn't enough to remove it... It's been cut out from the rear cell.

Some one, some where MUST know where I can get one or even if Meade will sell one. They've got them - but parting with them might not be easy.

I've torn this scope down for a total rebuild. I've stripped the paint off the tube and polished it. I've had the front and rear cells soda blasted so I'm not stopping now.

The scope is ready to go to get powder coated (locally) but I can't proceed until this is found and repaired.

Please, please, please help!



Thanks,

Phil Godfrey
St. Louis, MO

philgodfrey @ charter . net (retype the address - don't copy and paste, there are tons of hidden characters so spam bots can't pick up my address...just remove the spaces where appropriate)

314-607-5822 (cell)

I received this when I purchased my 12" LX200 - but nothing I have fits this.

The head is 8" across. It has 6 holes which are way off the normal pattern of Meade's standard and giant field tripod.

The Ultra-Wedge and Peterson mount assistant won't fit it. The hole pattern on those are about 1/2" off center from the heads drilled hole pattern (the one on the tripod head are out further toward the edge).

The main outer legs are 3" OD with 2" OD inner legs.

The legs measure from foot to top of the mounting where it bolts into the head is 47 inches.

The leg tubes by them selves without the cast mounts on them are 35 inches.

Standing up folded it's just over 50 inches tall.


WHAT TRIPOD IS THIS?

The guy who sold it with the scope said "it's the standard one that ships with the 12". It's obviously not, I had a 12" 11 years ago and that tripod was much smaller.

It dwarfs the "standard field tripod" that ships with the 8" LX200.


I'm not worried about the height. I am replacing the factory legs with 0.250" 6061-T6 aluminum so I can make it any size I want. What I am worried about is finding something that will allow me to mount things to it. Will accept just the drive base, but other things that use the screw pattern around the tripod won't work.


Any ideas which one this is?


Thanks,

Phil

I was bored tonight...it's raining, so I decided I needed a logo to stick on my laptop that I use with the scopes.

I created this in Photoshop CS3 (yes, it's my purchased copy). Went crazy with the lens flares at the end - but you can love it, hate it - I don't care. File format is jpeg. Image is 279x360 pixels (2.906 x 3.75 inches), 96 pixels per inch, 24-bit uncompressed.


Trying not to step on the toes of the fine folks with ASCOM, so I suggest that if you use this logo, use it privately.



Phil Godfrey
St. Louis, MO

I couldn't find a section called "site suggestions" on the forum to post this, so I'll do it here.


Is there any possibility of having the announcments moved to a different (or new) catagory in classified section? At times it really crowds the 'Misc & Other Astronomy' page.


Just wondering.

Louis Busby said:

I have seen the very same thing on two occassions - once with a telescope. It was a weather balloon. Both times it was in the same area of the sky you describe and the same time of day.

S u r e it was... The government said the same thing about Roswell.

By "slab" do you mean the other roof next to it?

I wanted to avoid putting any metal supports on the roof.

I like the drawer slide concept, that way it is not necessary to have supports protruding upward or metal track anywhere. It is self contained.

The only problem is I need about 9 feet of it. I could have it machined, it's a simple design but again cost will come to be an issue.

I was unable to locate the manufacture I found previously with the 4 foot tracks, but I did find this.

As everyone here has suggested...a small red LED will do just fine.

I'd stay away from the high intensity ones as they are bright and annoying - a few 20mA red diffused LED's should work just fine.

You can power them from any voltage provided you have the proper resistor. Use a resistor for each LED. That way, should one of them burn out you don't have the rest of the LED's getting more and more current which will just lead to failure of all lamps.

If I remember right:

Voltage drop, minus supply voltage, divided by current draw, equals resistor value in ohms. I could be wrong, it's been a while - so feel free to correct me.


Phil