Posts Made By: Andrew Riehl

I've got a friend of mine at work who believes that funding the space program has no bennefit at all to him. Anybody know a web resource where I can find the largest simple list of space program spinoff technologies?

The Mason Dixon Star party operated by the York county astronomical society has been revamped; the party has been known for having great organization, but pretty poor skies. This year the party has been moved to a much better site; the skies are much darker, and there are also many of the facilties of home (including yes indeed, flush toilets). Check the dates and for more info at http://www.masondixonstarparty.org

Had the sky to grab a 30:30:40 rgb image to blend in with my lum, so here it is...I should've aimed for a little more exposure time in the colors, but I guess this will do. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

The enemy of europe it was not on 7 december 1941 who attacked us. Germany should have been left alone me thinks. To the japanese who attacked us all of our efforts gone should have.

Sorry, Not at all familiar with the system. A quick info check at:
http://www.bbastrodesigns.com/cot/cot.html
shows a statement in the 'disadvantages' that says:
1. since operating system not realtime, small delays in motor commands
2. software and motor controller PID filters produce transient velocity errors
I believe both of these would prevent good autoguider use. But then again, this might not be the system you're referring to. Pretty much any simple dual axis controller can be modified to take autoguide signals through a relay box (I adapted a cheapo chinese eq-4 controller that I use on my vixen GP with very pleasing results) but with no goto capabilitly. An aligned finder and 'the sky' usually has me on target pretty quickly though.

Not sure about the the star2000 setup, never used one. If it is designed to work on drives with a standard autoguider port, I would assume it is probably mechanical relays shorting the direction to ground to induce movement. If it is indeed isolated mechanical relays, (like my sbig camera with external relay box), the modification should be fairly simple. I don't know how electronically savy you are, so I'll try to keep it simple. If the buttons on your hand controller are in the same configuration as my cheap chinese version (which I'm 95% sure they are), pushing the button will short the circuit to ground, and move the motor. Open the controller and follow the traces. if all the buttons have a common connection, that should be the ground. the other side will correspond to the button's drive and direction. The button acts as a the 'on/off' switch. Now the goal is to let the camera relays act also as one of these switches. So, basically a standard autoguider cable is set up with 6 wires; wire 1--no connection. wire 2--common ground. wire 3--RA-. wire 4--Dec -. wire 5--Dec +. wire 6--RA +. The goal is to have a 6 line female phone jack on the dd-1 to accept the autoguiding cable (I think it's easier to have a short wire extending from the controller and mount the jack to that, as opposed to flush mounting the jack to the controller). basically, splice a wire to the common point of all buttons (or any good ground point, preferrably closest in the circuit to the buttons), this will correspond to wire 2 in the jack. Then splice a wire on the opposite side of the switch on each dec button, these will correspond to Dec+ and Dec- (which goes to which doesn't matter) (wires 4 and 5). then do the same to the RA buttons, these will go to wire 3 and wire 6. That's pretty much all there is to it. The relays of the camera system will act just like pushing the button. Also in this configuration, the buttons can still be used normally as well without disconnecting any cables. Now you may want to confirm the relays and exact setup of the SX system, like I said I have no direct experience with these cameras.

Laughing extremely loud! I envy the folks that make these things; to have that much free time on their hands...
Regards
AR

I've been interested from afar in this treasure-hunting hobby for a couple of years now, and I think I may finally buy a detector this spring. Anybody else into this hobby as well?

The PETA post got my wheels going. The anti-hunting crowd is a much larger and broader crowd than the PETA extremists. Any anti-hunters here who'd like to debate? if not, I won't waste our time by running through my thoughts.

Larry, you seem to be very well knowledged in the subject; I purchased a detector today on an auction site that will remain unnamed. I purchased a very hardly used White's QXT detector. I got it at a price of $375. I've been going over these things with a fine toothed comb the last few weeks, and think I made an OK choice; Basically, I wanted something at an 'entry' level, but way above most of the department store junk out there. I didn't want to shell out a whole bunch of cash when I'm just getting my feet wet, but at the same time wanted a fairly capable instrument. I probably would've liked to have some more features, but with comparing its condition to the new price of this device, I think I got a decent bargain and something that will help me decide exactly what I want in a future purchase. This detector can be seen at:
http://www.whiteselectronics.com/qxt.html
Any insight on whether or not I did ok? (don't worry, I never get offended)