Re: [APML] The End of Tech Pan???

[Glenn Shaw <gshaw@alaska.net>]

Wow!!

If somebody as excellent as Robert Reeves is nickle and diming it and worrying
about 50 dollar expenditures, than I say Harrah!! The beauty of this hobby is
that people really can do quality work with very low budget.

Though I'm now able to afford more quality equipment (and so my results might
also well degrade), there were days in graduate school when a 5 dollar
expenditure on this hobby had to be worried about all night. In those days I was
a Hughe's Fellow going to school and building travelling wave tubes for Hughes
Aircraft Microwave Tube Division. One of those tubes went to the moon. Hughes
was a great company, but I was still a half starving student at USC.

I bought a Kodak 7 inch focal length f2.8 Ektar and talked one of my machinest
friends into building h first astrocamera. Its a very long story about how all
this worked, but one thing I did was make a mount with epoxy bearings and
pipefittings. Mt Palamar donated me some 2 x 3 inch glass plates of 103 ae
spectroscopic emulsion. Outdated, but still just perfectly fine 10 years later
being in a freezer. I built my own dc to 110 variable cycle converter, winding
my own toroid and even scrounging a chassis from some scrap aluminum and
learning to bend it myself. I had a Bushnell 60 mm spotting scope and used this
for a guider. I made a reticle with fine wire and illuminated it with a grain of
wheat bulb put in a one quarter inch pipefitting, soldered on the eyepiece. It
was a pretty good clooge. I guided by eye and had many experiences with
motercycle gangs and coyotes. Total investment might have been almost $100, but
the results were very rewarding and got me published numerous times in Sky and
Telescope. It was all very heady stuff. I met some great and very interesting
people and even spent a couple years studying astronomy under the great
astronomer Bart Bok at U. Arizona and working on a cooled film NASAl funded
project.

I loved astronomy, took all the courses and graduate exams, passed them with
flying colors then decided that this profession would ruin a good hobby, so I
switched to atmospehric physics, where I've been for a long time.

But now, newer color emulsions, CCD guiders, Astro-physics precision mountings
and modern optics are drawing me back into this game. Now its a little easier:
you can write checks and wait for equipment to be delivered and then go on
junkets to the deserts. But I've been an experimental physicist long enough and
hobbiest long enough to know that the real love of life is to get back to the
forge and to the little shop and drilll your own holes, and balance your own
equipment and cuss and swear at your inability to find a guide star.

I am reminded that Jefferson was a great hobbiest, like many of us. He did much
with awfully low tech equipment and so have so many of you.

glenn shaw

Robert Reeves wrote:

> > Right now I can buy astro stuff under $50 at my discretion. Over $50 to
> > about $250 is a special occasion (birthday/Christmas). In the realm of
> over
> > $500, it's time to have a long talk with the wife.
> >
> > Believe me, I would love to drop a couple of grand on a camera I could use
> > at home (I know the benefits of CCD's vs. light pollution) to shoot all
> the
> > small stuff. Maybe when I retire .....
> >
> > Marty
>
> Marty!  Welcome to my world!  I just bought a used PulsGuide and I feel
> guilty about it.  Its funny how the really old timers like you and me (yeah,
> how many folks on the list ever used 103a films?  I see four hands up in a
> room of 200) have nickle and dimed their equipment together over decades and
> still agonize over equipment "upgrades".  I keep the "when I retire" dream
> also but wonder how much astronomy will done on a retirement income.  I keep
> up hope with the words of a dear friend who is a NASA engineer in Houston.
> He says narly all brands of cat food taste pretty good, so maybe I can
> continue to squeek out a dime or two for this stuff after 2012 <G>!
>
> Robert Reeves                      reeves10@swbell.net
> 520 Rittiman Rd.                   www.robertreeves.com
> San Antonio, Texas 78209    210-828-9036
> USA                                     29.484  98.440  200 meters
>
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