Posts Made By: Erik Hammarlund

Floyd,

My Astrosky scope is on order, as I mentioned. I'd be curious to chat with you by email about any problems you had so I can avoid them in my own scope.... drop me a line when you get a chance:
erik_hammarlund at yahoo dot com

what are your plans for your sky commander ?

Oy. That doesn't sound good, at all... hope he's OK.

Are you complaining abount altitude (side bearings) or azimuth (bottom)?

And when you did the ebony star, did you also replace the teflon pads which ride atop the formica?

In terms of altitude, moving the bearing pads away from the bottom of the semicircle on the base("under" the altitude bearing) farther up the semicircle will increase the friction. The reverse is also true. In terms of azimuth, you want the pads near the edge for stability reasons.

Some scopes (which I have seen only online) use a combination of roller bearings and pads to reduce friction still further. I have no idea how well that works. But you could put a heavyweight lazy susan-type mechanism (between rocker box and ground board) to support the bulk of the scope and use screw-adjustable pads to fine tune reistance.

You may also have played with a near-perfectly balanced dob. If you have it balanced, you have the ability to have much lower friction in altitude than if it is unbalanced. This can translate to 'smoothness'. Have you checked your balance recently? Installing a counterweight (or a counter weight system) may help.

if your main target is planetary it sure would be nice to have EQ tracking, either manual or powered.

You can get a Super Polaris mount for $400:
http://www.astromart.com/classifieds/details.asp?classified_id=380515

That leaves you $500 for a tube and $100 for a diagonal.

You can get an outstanding non-apo 3" (and maybe even an apo 60) for that. A Megrez 80, for example, sold for under $350 recently. Prontos and Rangers sell for about $600 but often include a diagonal.

You can also get a decent 4" tube for $500.

I said carpet 'cause I was thinking about boat trailers (don't ask). I meant felt, which is widely available and designed for sliding things on it.

If it's in rural Vermont (hypothetically) and you get a phone call from the system--assuming it works, and that they don't walk in and rip out the phone lines--what are you going to do about it?

alarm-type systems only work if there's someone to hear the alarm (or, more accurately, if the thief thinks/cares that someone will hear the alarm).

Big heavy old used safes are always popping up on the market; I've seen 'em for as little as $500. If I were going to leave a lot of expensive equipment in a rural location that's what I'd use for sure. they won't stand up to any modern skilled theif but neither will a $99 system.

I think that was a mistake, though YMMV...

Why? Because there are few (no?) other places on the Net that are as informative and helpful as astromart. Anyone seeking knowlege will probably end up here at some point in their search.

Sadly, there are also few other places where the information, filtered through the various sources, is likely to be 1) honest, and 2) reliable. Here you get enough opinions that it's possible to tell what a 'consensus' is..... elsewhere, you often lack enough data to make a decision.

Will an unnamed vendor "object" is he's the recipient of a negative post? Sure--business is business and nobody likes to be the target of negative comments, true or not.

Does his protest automatically mean the post is 'objectionable'? No, of course not. In fact, that thread had some pretty darn helpful information in it re the relative quality and availability of some APOs. I'm glad I read it.

That's not to say that NOTHING is objectionable. But if you start pulling non-slanderous posts simply because a sponsor doesn't like them, Astromart can lose credibility. And it's credibility that makes this a better site for data than other places.

This was a normal conversation:

-Some people said "A."

-A vendor said "B."

-In response to the vendor, some said "no, you're wrong, it's A", and other people said "well, you may be right but we've got some written proof of A; where's your proof of B?"

And that was about as bad as it got. Nobody insulted the vendor. He may stand to lose business IF "A" was true.... but that's an issue of honest information, not objectionable speech or bias.

If I could (hypothetically) buy a lx200 optical set for cheap in a Chinese tube with a downgraded focuser, I'd love to know about it and share that fact with others. And I doubt anyone would protest if it was Meade they were talking about.

Preserve honesty. Restore the post.

I had an old ultima (celestron) 7.5 for a while and enjoyed using it. the relief is very short though. I"m not sure I would want to look throung a 5mm plossl though I doubt I"ll need to much. Are you going to use it with the barlow?

There's a 2.8 barlow (which I know nothing about) for sale in the classifieds. I'd note that it may be more pleasant to sell your shorty and get a 3x barlow than to use a lot of 5mm plossls. but then gain maybe not.

A 10" SCT is a lot more expensive than a meade 10" dob. Perhaps you're better off upgrading the dob with an EQ platform ($500 new, less used) and saving the $$$.

But of course it depends what you want to upgrade--optics? tracking? digital circles? Aperture?

If you get a higher quality 10" dob, and a tracking platform, and Sky Commander, you may as well get a 10" SCT with autostar.

However, the dob setup is a lot cheaper in bigger sizes; somewhere between 12.5" and 15" seems to be the turning point.