Posts Made By: Donald Durbin

To All,

As you may have noticed, the forum name has changed to Chinese Optics Imports. While the name has changed the forum rules will remain the same.

No personal attacks will be tolerated. (Try to respect the right of others to disagree with you, even if you know the other person is wrong. Count to ten and read it over again before you hit the post button.)

No curse words or pseudo curse words will be tolerated. (I know it sounds a little silly, but, I consider this to be the fastest way for a forum to degrade into a furball.)

No blatant advertisements please. (You are welcome to give your opinions on products that you own or at least have tried out. Please do not try to hype vaporware products here. Before you hit the post button ask yourself if your post really looks like it belongs in the classifieds section of Astromart.)

Thank you all for your help and understanding.
Don Durbin

To All,

Let all try not to discuss products that have not yet gone into production. How can anyone talk about the quality of an item that does not yet exist?

Thank you
Don Durbin

To All,

I wanted to see an inexpensive 152 APO as much as everyone else so I let this thread go for a while. I even sent an inquiry to these people about a 102 APO lens. I never got any response.

I am going to leave the responses but I am asking all of you, Please let this thread die.

Thanks
Don Durbin

Thanks

Hi All,

If this looks familiar to some it is because I posted it on the Chinese Optics Importors forum.

I am the moderator of this forum.

No personal attacks will be tolerated. (Try to respect the right of others to disagree with you, even if you know the other person is wrong. Count to ten and read it over again before you hit the post button.) This includes back handed attacks or broad sweeping attacks of other groups or vendors.

No curse words or pseudo curse words will be tolerated. (I know it sounds a little silly, but, I consider this to be the fastest way for a forum to degrade into a furball.)

No blatant advertisements please. (You are welcome to give your opinions on products that you own or at least have tried out. Please do not try to hype vaporware products here. Before you hit the post button ask yourself if your post really looks like it belongs in the classifieds section of Astromart.)

In the past this forum could get ugly pretty fast. I am determined not to allow that to happen here as long as I am the moderator. Thank you all for your help and understanding.

Don Durbin

To All,

We all know that we can use our binoviewers in an SCT without a corrector. Even some Refractors give us the ability to do this. My TAK FS-128 is a good example of a scope that will allow some binoviewers to focus with some EPs.

I have always thought that the Meade SN series telescopes were close to focusing a binoviewer without a corrector.

Last night I was able to do that with a number of my binoviewer EP's. It was a good night and my target was Jupiter.

I have installed a very low profile Moonlite focuser on my SN8. I was using a Burgess 24 binoviewer. Of course any of the cheaper binoviewers with their short 101mm light path would have worked in this configuration.

The first EP's I tried were the Burgess 20mm binolites that came with the binoviewer. After that I used 21mm Televue Plossls, 21mm Denks, 19mm Televue Panoptics, 18mm Televue Radians, 9mm Ortho HD's, 4.8mm Naglers, and a pair of Generic 32mm Plossls. The Generic 32mm Plossls and 21mm Denks were right on the edge, but they do focus.

The only EP's I have tried last night that have failed to focus were the 11mm UW80 EP's.

Denk binoviewers might also focus in this setup with some EP's but they do require at least another 10mm or so of light path. If you try this with Denks be sure to remove the powerswitch as it adds 8mm or so to the light path. The 19mm Televue Panoptics and 18mm Televue Radians might be a good choice to try with.

If I get another clear night soon I will try the Denks and see which EP's I can use with them.

Don Durbin

Taken with Canon 350D for 15 minutes guided using Orion autoguider at 1600 ISO with Baader S nebula filter on SN8

Don Durbin

Taken with Canon 350D for 15 minutes guided using Orion autoguider at 1600 ISO with Baader S nebula filter on SN8

To All,

I am fairly certain that most Moderators do not watch their forums hoping for the chance to moderate or in the extreme case delete posts. I know that I do not watch hoping for the chance to moderate or in the extreme case delete posts in the forums that I moderate.

I recently got some private email accusing me of being over zealous in my moderation of this forum. I would just as soon let these forums go and allow the chips to fall where they may. However if I did that, I would not be doing the job as Moderator. I recognize the fact that you cannot please of of the people all of the time. Anyone who has ever tried to do so will quickly find that almost everyone is displeased with your efforts.

I have tried to allow a little more latitude on this forum, simply because it has been dead for quite a while. I would like to be able to continue that effort.

In today's America there are some very strong political feelings. As a moderator, I feel I cannot allow politics an open door to this forum. There is a political forum on Astromart. Please feel free to use it.

Please try to allow that your opinion may not be the only one that counts or in some cases may not even be correct.

Do not make direct attacks on individuals, specific brand names, or manufacturers. >

If you own a specific piece of equipment and you wish to share your experience with it, please do! Tell us what you liked and what you did not like. Make suggestions as to how it could have been better or worse. Share with us your work around and fixes to overcome any short comings that you may have encountered. That is what this forum should be about. 8O

As always on any forum that I moderate, cursing, pseudo curse words, acronyms where it is common knowledge that a curse word is being used, are never allowed and your post will be deleted.

Thanks
Don Durbin
Moderator

It was recently suggested that the reason that Chinese optics are so popular, is that the economy is in such bad shape that people cannot afford anything better and therefore make due with inferior optics.

I think that Chinese optics were popular long before our economy tanked. I also think that the once inferior optics have done quite a bit of catching up.

It was recently suggested that you cannot get an excellent image with Chinese optics. With the light pollution, jet contrails, global warmed unsettled atmosphere, and the random car lights, in today's world I am not sure you can really take advantage of any optical quality difference that some manufacturers say that they have. I think image processing plays a much bigger role. Although the software to do that does not come from China.

Don Durbin

I always love these sound bites, "read the legislation first", so simple, so easy, "read the legislation first". Yeah right, sure does make a nice sound bite. It is not really practical though. :S

I guaranty you that there is no Congressman, no Congresswoman, and no Senator in the United States Congress that reads every line of every piece of legislation that they vote on. Heck, except for very special cases they do not even write their own stuff. That is what the staff does. The staff reads and then briefs the legislator on the fine points of the bill.

Now I am not saying that the legislature do not have any input into the bill, they hammer out the points of the bill in committee and then a member or members of their staff put the bill together. The staff often pulls all nighters hammering out the wording of the bill. Sometimes a Congressman, Congresswoman, or Senator even gets involved in that.

Are there some lazy staffers that may not be as up on the bill as they should be. Yeah, I would bet there are. I would also bet that the first time a Congressman, Congresswoman, or a Senator gets caught flat footed finding out about something late about a particular bill that becomes an embarrassment, some staffers employment probably come to an end.

So did they personally read the bill, probably not. Do they know what is in the bill, they had better know if they want to keep their jobs. Do they need to read every bill? No they do not and it is just silly to suggest that they should.

Don Durbin