[APML] Attention Schmidt camera owners

[Robert Reeves <reeves10@swbell.net>]

Greetings everyone,

I have spoken to a number of Schmidt camera owners, notably David Levy, Dean
Ketelsen, Douglas Schmutz,
Jim Bandy, John Mirtle, Kent Kirkley, Michael Treacy, and Rick Dilsizian,
about a little project I am doing.

Now I would like to hear from the rest of the Schmidt owners on the APML
list.

As we know, Epoch Instruments is out of business, so we Schmidt owners are
orphaned.  We have to repair these cameras ourselves now.  I recently found
my own 25-year old Schmidt was starting to have problems.  This has forced
me to research the techniques of repairing and adjusting Schmidt cameras.
This also made me decide to gather all the info I can about these
instruments and make a "collective Schmidt camera knowledge base" for us to
reffer to for repair and adjustment instructions and ideas about
modifications to our cameras.  I have gotten some terrific information from
the above mentioned people (and in particular a torrent of practical camera
adjustment advice from Jim Bandy and Kent Kirkley) and have nearly completed
writing this up in a document which now spans 5000 words. I will place this
on my web site and will include much of it in the second edition of my book
Wide-Field Astrophotography.

So, I kindly ask all other Schmidt camera owners to tell me about things
they have done with their instruments that I can add to this document.  Tell
me about problems you had and how you solved them, special modifications,
special user techniques.... basically anything you have experienced beyond
the basic owner's manual stuff.

I had wanted to get a first version of this document on my web site this
holiday, but alas... the honey-do list has taken on the proportions of the
Tasks of Hercules.  It will be a few more days before I'm ready because I
need to insert the photos.  Thats a slow process for me because I code my
web pages by hand with an ASCII editor (too impatient to learn an HTML
authoring program).

I thank you folks in advance for any insights you can share with other
Schmidt camera owners.

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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