Posts Made By: Anthony Lutton

Yeah, M26 was the other one missed. From northern Ohio, Aquarius wasn't even visible early this morning.

For having an LX200 for the last few years, I thought my hopping skills would be rusty. But the wide FOV of the small refractor and super clear night we had was perfect.

Anyone else participate this year so far??

I have a classic LX200 and keeping the handbox in my right coat pocket seems to do fine every winter in Ohio. Although I can't read the screen sometimes, I know what buttons I'm hitting, so it's not a huge deal.

That cool little black box (no, it isn't indestructable like on an airplane) also serves dual purposes. First, its main purpose is a counterweight for the azimuth axis... and since it has to be there, I figured it should be a useful hunk of wood. So I designed it to hold all of those little eyepiece, finder and scope caps that seem to walk off every single time I'm out! It'll hold pretty much any little accessory like filters or extra batteries.

For the declination (altitude) axis, things got a LOT tougher. With the Meade UWA weighing 2.5lbs or some ridiculous weight, balance became a serious issue. So the sled that the scope rides on has 3 different adjustments... the altitude hubs (white HDPE) have 4" of travel. The rings can also move almost 2" each on the sled. Finally, the scope can be moved in the rings to help aid the adjustments.

The azimuth bearing was made from a disk of HDPE and some ebony star samples from Home Depot! No need to buy...haha!

The azimuth bearing is HPDE riding on 4 little HDPE pads.

The wood is Red Oak, because I think it looks nice and when I was at the hardware store, it seemed to dampen vibrations better than the others. I basically held the board up and smacked it and felt the vibrations. Not too scientific, but I'm very happy with it. I still need to cover the white bearings with some wood or black paint, and I plan to add a small handle to the back so that I don't have to grab the focuser/visual back to move the scope.


Overall, the mouht is exactly what I needed for this scope. It is light and easy to use. It looks nice enough that my wife doesn't mind it sitting out and ready to use!!

If you'd like more details, contact me. The nicest thing about my mount is that I designed it and I'm very happy with it... feels personal I guess.

Here is the link: www.pbase.com/eagle92395/astro_pics

Wow!

David, you may notice that the 6x30 finder usually isn't free of color!! Also, there may be some spherical aberrations. Also, it only magnifies at one setting. You'd have the fallbacks of both designs

I guess I'm missing something in it...??

Not sure if it was a scam or April Fools joke, but it seems all 5 ads from the person are gone along with the account (can't find the name anywhere).

Yeah, tried to contact the seller and ask a few questions, but the ad was gone before I got a chance

Herb does a good job monitoring the thousands of postings and ads a day.

That sounds reasonable for a modest alignment. Do you use a crosshair eyepiece for the centering/alignment? Also, is the scope "eye" level or do you use a precise bubble level?

Also, the fork and OTA may be a bit skewed and the drives may have some play in them. If you don't mind tinkering, check out www.mapug.com (or .org) and especially Dr. Grainer's site. He has about every detail on the LX200 that you could want.

If you don't like to tinker, I'd suggest Dr. Clay Sherrod's Supercharge service. He'll do all the little mechanical and optical alignments that need done. He cleans, fixes and secures everything and really makes the scope a dream. There is a link to his service in the ETX forum.

Also, search for a program called "Best Pair". I don't have a link handy, but it selects the best pair of alignment stars for you (too close or too far apart can hurt the GOTO accuracy).