Posts Made By: Joe Conway

Now you can get pumped up at the mount. Stay off the steroids though. We'll call you the "Telemanator" Say that 10 times. Joe

I'm not sure why no one has responded to your question. Maybe you should repost it to the beginners section.

As you mentioned, there's many reasons why your viewing of Jupiter may not be up to your expectations. Most importantly collimation, then seeing or turbulence. Do you take the scope out a lot? What range of eps do you have now? I don't have a Dob but a SCT and can tell you that unless the seeings pretty good I can only get out the 8.8mm UW on the good nights. I usually stay around 10mm XW and above. On really stable nights I've pushed 5mm and that's the theoretical limit of my scope. That doesn't happen very often, maybe twice in 2 years.

Short answer is to keep going out. Get your collimation spot on. Once you know it's not collimation, then keep going out. Sooner or later you'll get one of those perfect nights and then you'll say; "I get it now" while using your 9mm. Took me awhile to get that. Also, it took me awhile to understand the central obscuration and the f/length of my scope and how those affect the viewing of planets. Joe

There's a Meade 14mm UW listed in the classifieds for $195. I have one of these and will never sell it. I have a Pentax in the same focal length and when viewing Jupiter find the Meade to bring out slightly more detail. Joe

This fellow doesn't do too bad for head wear. TV reception in Nepal has definitely improved while he's been king.

After some thought I decided to return it for a refund. It was a nice to have but not a need to have.

Thanks to all for the comments, especially Rod since I believe he's correct in informing the community. The manufacturer shipped it to me this way, they and the community should know.

Guess I'm tired of getting sold crap. Thanks folks. You made a great jury. Joe

You all may have missed something here.

The oil companies "forced" the Canadians to use temperature regulating pumps because the gas being dispensed was too cold and thus they were losing money because of the temperature rated standard vs. cost.

Now the Americans with hot climates are asking the oil companies to use the same pumps here. The oil companies are claiming foul for us asking for the same pumps. They don't want fairness, just profits. The oil companies threatened the pump manufacturer when California approached the pump manufacturer to start installing pumps here.

It's all about who really controls the market and how much money's in the brief cases going to Congress. You all know this anyway. Joe

We don't have a lot of mosquitoes in the desert. So when I go to where there's mosquitoes they eat me like ravens on fresh road kill. Here's how I have to dress. Joe

What ever you do don't ever spray Deet sitting in your car. I did this one time because the Mosquitoes were so bad outside (fishing hole) I climbed into my nearby car for shelter to spray myself.

This stuff eats plastic on contact and left dots all over my plastic lens for my speedometer. The dots couldn't be polished off.

MY BAD. Joe

I said I'd get back to all of you when I received the Intes Micro 603 we ordered. We haven't had time to test it on the interferometer, but that will happen in short order.

My first impressions; First, UPS did their usual smashing of the shipping box. It was completely mutilated. Luckily the scope itself is sent in its own padded case which helped protect it, sort of. Since UPS did such a fine job of throwing this item around they managed to knock loose the secondary mirror cell. So much for collimation.

The secondary mirror cell is held in place with a threaded ring. It is imperative to a user to make sure this ring is tightened snug. If you don't, the metal threaded cap that covers the collimation screw area, when turned to remove it, can rotate the secondary mirror cell. So don't put the cap on very tight or don't allow the cap to bottom out tight.

Visual inspection of all the parts; not the best anodize coatings of the black adapters I've ever seen. The included finder scope is ok, but is heavy and looks like military optics. The reticle was loose in the finder, probably from the UPS effort. The included padded case is nice, but the material inside has a tendency to collect hair. Mine looked like it was full of cat hair but cleaned up nicely.

The optical tube of the MAK had a paint chip right on the top. I don't think this happened from UPS, but since the scope is for work, I don't care. The structure of the scope is solid and built well, not like a cheap scope.

The focuser works good. It feels tight in some areas but I think it will smooth in with some use. Not much if any backlash from forward to reverse focusing, that is good.

The optics; I had to collimate it since UPS was so abusive. It wasn't too far off once the cell was tightened back down. Here's where I think the scope may excel. I used a LED with multiple apertures for a false star. It was daylight so I had to collimate indoors down a really long hall. Once I tweaked it close it became apparent that you could really dial in on the diffraction rings when focused to a pin point. I didn't notice any real flaring and can't wait to get it on a stable mount and work a small star at night. So in my lowly opinion, I believe the optics will be on par with the specs.

We'll know for certain in the next couple of weeks.

All in All, I'm happy with it for the reason we bought it, so far. If I was buying this for my own use I may have taken issue with the paint defect, maybe not. However, for the reason of the optics, I feel if you work the collimation to absolute perfection, then you'll see this scope will bring out some truly tight star pin points, almost refractor, but not quite, but close.

I'll follow up with the optic report soon. Joe

Glad to see someone ran with my design or one like it that I posted in the Yahoo Losmandy group some year or so ago.

Their product could be better with the use of duplex pair bearings as I had shown in my original drawings. Bearings are as important as the precision of the worm. Rolling noise is something that some seem to ignore.

I hope they chose their bearings well. I only found (2) known types in 1/2 inch size that would take the load and they were expensive. I spent the bulk of my efforts with my mechanical engineer friend working the worm axial load equations. We have some 15 pages of equations to get the result. Took a long time since no one knew what the specs were on the worm bearing loads. Safest way would've been to use the same bearings as Scott, but then we wouldn't achieve the precision and stiffness as we did with duplex bearings each end.

From the looks of their pictures they used the same size bearings as the original? Load not a problem with 5/8 inch bearings, but single bearings each end sucks no matter how you adjust end play.

My design allowed for loading the worm gear though the center window and not through the end. Half inch bearings left more meat (material) to keep the whole assembly more rigid so the housing wouldn't flex. Again, 1/2 inch bearings in duplex pairs each end with TIR of something like .0001 to .0002 or less if you messed long enough.

Scott didn't leave us much to work with material wise for a retro fit. I sent him my design idea about year or so ago. Never did hear back from him but he is a busy man.

I did drop the ball on my effort due to unforeseen circumstances with my time for the last year.

Yeah folks, I'm still around and not dead.

Joe Conway