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     Well guys I'd say last night was a smashing success. After 2 & 1/2
years of work it was great to see something, and even better, to see
something really really nice. We (people at the ATM Meeting) viewed Venus
and Saturn with Saturn stealing the show.

 

     I only eyeballed the collimation with a collimation cap as the primary
has no center mark yet.

 

     Through regular plossls the views were very good. At 40X with my 25mm
EP (telescope FL is 990 MM, it's an F/6.5) Saturn was small, but tack on
sharp with 3 moon visible. with my zoom EP at about 10MM and a 2X barlow
(198X) the view was still right on when the seeing calmed down. 

 

     The real test and proof to me that this scope is great was Mike L was
very kind and tossed his 7MM Nagler with a 2X powermate in for about 283X
and you could see the cassini divison along with one of the closer moons and
some noticable banding. When the seeing calmed intermitantly the views were
still very sharp. So this scope pretty much stands up to the old thumb rule
of 50X per inch of aperature. I even held my digital camera up to the EP
just for the heck of it and actually got a really nice image of Saturn!
Albeit there was a slight ghost image above it from my hand moving.

 

     Anyway, the point is, with the collimation just fairly close the views
were tack on sharp even at high power with good contrast and the views
simply blew me away. The scope has completely met my expectations.

 

     I now consider this project officially DONE! Just a few odds and ends
such as adding a center mark on the primary, and stablilizing the pivot bolt
with a second nut, along with putting some final stuff for it on my webpage.


 

     I must say when I started this project long ago I never imagined the
outcome would be so great. The largest part that helped me was meeting Matt
and Gary (Fuchs) who introduced me at the ATM Meetings where I got much help
from Gordon W and everyone else. I owe you all much. I am more than
satisfied with this project and I think I have grown and learned in many
ways since it's start.

 

     Many thanks again to Gordon and everyone else!

 

     Now it's back to polishing on the 10" ;)

 

Mitch   

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