Posts Made By: Ron Zick

Rich,
I have a 10 ft. ProDome that I purchased used. I personally have not dealt with Technical Inovations personally but the person I bought my dome from had and was quite pleased with how the original owners of TII handled some minor problems,(short on some screws). I have the construction manual and all of the correspondence that took place between the my dome's original owner and TII. The manual, by my standards is quite adequate, but I have several other owners feel that it wasn't through enough, it's just a matter of how well you are at putting things together. The original owners have sold the business and I have not heard any actual reports about the new owner. There was a ProDome on AstroMart last fall by a very disgruntled owner. i dont' know what he could have done wrong during assembly to cause the problems he claimed to have. It should be remembered that the dome is a do it yourself project, the end result will be no better than your skill and expertise during construction. The dome itself is quite strong and weather tight. I have not had any snow or rain blow in yet. The only weak points are the dome shutter and actuator which works quite well but really the design could be improved, it's basically a cable windlas that pulls the shutter open and shut. The windlas motor is noisy and occasionally the cable tension might need to be adjusted. The other point that could be improved is the dome rotation system. The original owner of my dome did not install the dome rotation system, he just rotated it by hand. I have designed my own which is almost done and uses stepper motors and a gear reduction units. The problem is that Technical Inovations design use a rigid mounted drive motor which drives the dome rim by a friction wheel. If you excessive variation in rim to base distance, the factory drive system can lose traction. Their drive unit is also powered by the same 12v d.c. motor that the shutter actuator uses (noisy). Technical Inovations sold over 120 domes in 2001 and 2002 was projected at about 200 so there must be a lot of happy owners. Sirius also makes an excellent dome. If you bought either one you would be happy. I don't know how much a comparable Sirius Dome is compared with the Pro Dome. The Sirius uses a drive ring instead of the friction drive. I don't know how much that is worth but the ProDome ,IMHO, has a better shutter design. Take your pick, you'll enjoy your scope magnitudes more. It's always setup, always at temperature, all of your acc. are right where you need them, and your scope isn't being banged around trying to always set it up for those quick looks.

I'm betting that they are going to use a new larger mount for the 14" and then use it on the 12" also. This would allow them to distribute development costs over two sizes and improve a definite deficiency in the 12". Of course this is just speculation on my part but if they don't do this, it would greatly cripple the 14" before it is even released.

I don't own a GPS 12in. but I do own the "Classic 12in." and our stop to stop is more like 30-40 turns ( just a guess, I always lose count). The mirror is locked by a bolt on the Classic version during shipment. The plug you see is probably the hole that was needed for the Classic version. The GPS version from what I can tell just uses the mirror lock during shippment (upper knob).

The focus lead screw,( the part inside the scope, behind the focus knob that you can't see) has approx. 40 threads/in. which means that 1.75 turns is moving the mirror only .04375 in., not anywhere enough. Have you read the Meade manual yet? Are you sure that the mirror lock is releasing the focus mechanism properly? The microfocuser is to be used for fine focus only. Did you get your scope from a camera store or an actual telescope store? It sounds like the dealer didn't know the scope he was demonstrating. Goto www.mapug.org, the Meade Advanced Products Users Group. They have a lot of information there on the LX200's (GPS and Classic).

Hope this helps and good luck

Darian,
If you follow the history of the U.S. you will see a steady progression of the state's having the majority of power to the federal government having the power. There are many things that could be attributed to this. The biggest one that comes to my mind is the fact that the world changed.

In the 1700's the states were culturally almost countries unto themselves with little need for cooperation among each other.

The urbanization of the U.S., as people moved to the cities and began earning their livelyhood from each other instead of from themselves when we were basically agrigarian. Today you still see a major difference in how the rural areas view politics vs. the urban areas.

Technology has made the world smaller and reduced or eliminated many of the boundaries which made up much of a state's identity.

Taxes. The states used to have all of the governments budgets and the federal government was mainly military and world government affairs. As everybody started looking to Washington D.C. to supply more of our wants, we, the states incrementally have given up rights and authority for dollars. (55mph speed limit, etc.)

Judicial System. Over the years the Supreme Court and the court system as a whole, has went from an interpeting the law to writers of the law.

Philosophy and religion. 200 yrs. ago Christianity was the dominant influence and many of our laws were written from a certain world view. Today this world view is quite different and quite complex with a large variety of new philosophies and religions each having their own influence.

There are whole bunch more ..........

Mike,
Which camp was the experimentation done in that you are refering to?

If it is Dachu, then the data is rather suspect. Dr. Robert Berger, Dept. of Cardiothoriac Surgery, New England Deaconess Hospital and Harvard Medical School has a chapter, Nazi Science- The Dachau Hypothermia Experiments, in the book titled "Medicine, Ethics, and the Third Reich", pub. Sheed&Ward. Dr. Berger brings up the fact that the experiments were scientifically flawed. The data does not specify age, blood pressure, heart rate, internal body temperature, etc and contains many discrepancies and contradictions. Most of the experimentation was actually done by and or under the direction of a Sigmund Rascher who was an aquaintance of Himmler. It seems that Rascher was involved with much of the experimentation at Dachau, high altitude, Polygal, cancer cure. He was very egotisiical and demanded to do the expermintation himslef rather than by those who were qualified. Dr. Berger brings up the point that if the experimental data was treated with the proper scientific scrutiny and if the Alexander report were more widely circulated, then any referance to the data as being meaningful would be dropped and the ethical problem you refer to, wouldn't exist.

The book is quite interesting and gives some insight into the decline of ethics in Nazi Germany. Euthanasia, sterilization, human experimentation, and the Nuremberg trials are discussed
in relation to medical ethics today. John J. Michalczyk, the author of the book, is also a Harvard doctoral graduate and has done research on the relationship of propaganda, art and film.

Dan,
You will have a hard time finding an affordable Cad program that can do the unwrapping that you desire. A much more practical approach is a mathematical plot like Cal's method does. A fancy CAD program isn't always the most straight forward.

Good luck on your project

James,
I've been following this thread and I have to agree with Bill B's. and your assesement of the situation in international politics.

Being that this is a religion, philosophy and politics forum, one of the big differences, that nobody has mentioned yet in helping create the Trans-Atlantic gap is religion and philosophy. There has been a massive difference in theological seminaries in the U.S. and Europe since the 1880's. Rationalism had it's birth in Germany's seminaries in the 1880's and had a huge effect (negative IMHO) on the churches and philosophy of Germany and was instrumental in the rise of Fascism. The French had the Existentialists that later helped form the present predominant world view in Europe.

It is interesting to note that there were two rather significant theologians in Germany during the 1930's, Tillick and Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a conservative theologically and also an outspoken pacifist. Tillick was liberal theologically and was not the outspoken pacifist. When Hitler started to make things rough in Germany, guess who ended up staying in Germany? Bonhoeffer. He ended up being hung in a prison camp just two weeks before the allies arrived for being involved with Hitler's attempted assination. Tillick high tailed it to the U.S. and went to the University of Chicago for a professorship. Tillick lived to a ripe old age and got to personally influence the likes of Hillary Clinton and Jimmy Carter and many other famous liberals.

Don't mean to get to long winded here but the point I am trying to make is that what a person and nation believes is how a person and nation behaves or acts. I see much of the European behavior of recent months atypical for it's believe system. Their behavior has been a direct reflection of their pulpits, theologians, and philosophers. Likewise for the terrorists, they are living out their believe system.

It is interesting to note the very moderate position that Arabnews.com is reporting since the bombings in Saudi Arabia. They understand what's going on and what it will take to stop the continued growth of the fanatics. It appears the Arab's see the problem as theological and are pursuing the situation as such.

www.ccdguy.com/lx200pp.htm has the schematics for the classic lx200.

Michael,
You didn't say what size of scope will be mounted on your new pier. The 10in. concrete pier might be on the small side if your planning on putting anything of size on it, especially if you ever want to do any astrophotography. While the 10in. pier will stand okay, it probably will not have enough mass for good vibration dampening. The aluminum tubing also while being a very good choice from an appearence and corrosion stand point is also lacking in the material rigidity area. I would highly recommend increasing the pier diameter to at least a 12in. or larger if your scope weighs more than a few pounds. I would also suggest using steel tubing at least 6in., preferabelly 8in. in diameter with .25in. side wall thickness.

Getting back to the sonotube question. I would only use the sonotube for the above ground portion of your pier. If you use it below ground level, you will have a difficult time getting the hole the exact size needed to allow the sonotube to fit without being oversized. If you have any air gaps between the undisturbed ground and the sonotube you will be losing some of the rigidity that you are trying to achieve. Just make sure and leave the hole realatively smooth so that the frost went cause the pier to heave. Eugene also gives good advice on the vibrator. Nothing makes a concrete project look bad like the alligators. I would also suggest to remove the sonotube while the concrete is still green( few days after pouring). If you wait to long the sonotube will have tendency to stick when you go to peel it off. You can make a cement wash to spruce up any scars or imperfections when you remove the sonotube. You can cut the sonotube but it is an awful lot of work. Unwrapping is usually much easier.

Good luck on your project.

Are you using PVC conduit? Rigid (metal) although more susceptible to corrosion would act as a shield and prevent potential problems.

Code requires 18 in. seperation between the low voltage and high voltage conduits. I know, low voltage stuff gets buried with line voltage stuff a lot but I really would encourage you to go with two seperate trenches if at all possible.

The noise signal strength will vary with the square of the distance bewtween the two lines, so the more distance the better.

Ultimately you probably might get by with a single trench but you need to ask yourself, "what will I save by only using one trench?" At best you will save only the cost and effort of trenching the extra trench. For this savings, are you willing to sacrifice the stability of your LAN. What if in the unlikely scenario the AC line shorts out and puts 110V on the LAN. How much is your data and astro equipment going to cost to repair or replace from such a surge? What about safety?

I know all this sounds far fetched but Murphy really was an optimist and I've seen the results of cut corners.

Good luck with your project.