(SNES) Trading my 13?

["Dave Aucoin" <deepskydave@hotmail.com>]

Gee, I dont know where that sudden impulse came from...hmmmmm

Anyways, I decided not to part with my 13". I have given it serious 
consideration, plus a few well shed tears by my wife. I have modified the 
scope though. I took the counterweights off the outside of the scope and 
secured them inside the mirror box. I also cleaned the mirror, clipped the 
wooden bearing horns and nicknamed the scope "Stubby". By placing the 
weights inside the mirror box, the back of the scope was bare.

I even removed the chrome ball hitch that has become well known and 
discarded it because I really dont need the weight. With removing the ball 
hitch, I had to re-distribute the weight on the upper tube assembly (UTA). I 
took the Kendrick heater controller and moved it to the back face of the 
mirror box. I re-directed the dew remover wires to the bottom of the scope 
via 6 foot female to male RCA extenders and in one case with a "Y" jack to 
take up 2 dew removers to make room for more at the controller. I will be 
replacing my homemade dew removers with Kendrick dew removers for aesthetic 
purposes. By moving the Kendrick controller down to the mirror box, by the 
simple weight formula (for weight in designing a true dob), from the center 
of gravity, I saved about 1-2 lbs at the UTA, thus the removal of the ball 
hitch which added 5lbs to the back end of the scope for balancing purposes.

On the bottom of the mirror box, I attached a 1/4" luan plate over the old 
holes where the weights and hitch were attached. I cut and drilled holes in 
the luan to accomodate the 4" fan and mirror alignment nuts. So the bottom 
of the mirror box looks like it was never drilled into. I will either stain 
and/or polyurethane for weather protection as well as the stubs of the old 
bearing horns.

My next project after these modifications was to design and attach a filter 
swing in the UTA. The swing presently holds my 2" OIII and swings in and out 
of the light path beneath the focuser draw tube with about .500" clearnace. 
It does not affect the light path at all and it works really well! This is a 
perfect modification because I hate to blink the filter with my fingers in 
front of my eyes during my obscure planetary nebula searches. As I write 
this, I am planning to remove this single swing and replacing it with a 
wheel to hold my 2" OIII and 2" UHC as well plans to add a 2" H-beta. A 
wheel with 6-2" holes and every other one occupied by one 2" filter. 
Rotating the filter knob turns the swing/wheel into the proper position. I 
will add a unique click stop to stop the wheel for constant viewing position 
or removing the click stop for blinking effect. The method of holding the 
filters in place is unique as well as streamlined.

So with the modifications, and the replcement of the old truss tubes with 
new ones, I am only longing for dob driver slewing and tracking which soon 
will be a reality with the advent of me buying a pocket computer, the E-125 
from Casio(32mb ROM/32mb RAM), aptly named the Cassiopeia, with programs 
like The Sky for Pocket PC and Deepsky 2000 for Pocket PC, will grant me 
either computer control through direct connection to the PC and drives or by 
coordinates fed to me in alt az mode with the benefit of showing me postions 
in both RA/Dec and Alt/Az.

The Casio is about $399-$450 and with a nice 10% coupon will take some of 
the sting out of the wallet at the Casio outlet store in Wrentham. The dob 
driver is about $650 because of the rim drive option for me to drive my 
scope in its current configuration. IT will slew to my obscure planetaries 
and track once there or I can move the scope by hand and start tracking at 
the flick of a switch.

So I am slowly advancing my way along, but until the drives and computer 
arrive I will relish in my starhopping skills and probably not go the direct 
computer/drive connection in favor of starhopping and just use the tracking 
ability, until I get into CCD imaging with the 13" which will take place 
very soon as well. Lookout Mario and Gary, Is'a comin thru! You aint seen 
nuttin yet, with my obscure planetary images I will soon acquire!!

Now for news on the 26" mirror. I talked with Mike Mattei and he agreed to 
inspect and test my mirror to see if it is something he can take on and 
complete for me, for which I will compensate him for his help. He will test 
for free and will give me a go/no-go answer as soon as he completes his 
testing. I hope he can, because I would like to get the 26" operational 
soon. This scope will be a relatively no-frills observing scope, but Mike 
said I would benefit with dob driver control and slewing because of the 
field size at the eyepiece and the pointing ability of the scope when at 9 
feet off the ground looking for faint fuzzies. I will use a telrad, Kendrick 
dew remover unit and probably 4 heaters for the finder, Telrad, EP and 
secondary. This project is put on hold until I receive word from Mike, which 
he will get the mirror this Saturday for testing.

So there you have it. During my withdrawl from faint obscure planetary 
nebula observing until the monsterous bright thing in the sky 3 weeks out of 
the month goes away, I will be having fun designing new gadgets for the 13" 
and dreaming of the 26". Having Deepsky object (DSO) catalogs handy in the 
pocket PC will eliminate some of the atlases and observing catalogs that I 
lug around (the star chart and atlas briefcase I carry around weighs more 
than the EP case) will get lighter, I am pursuing geting a software based 
Uranometria designed with some DSO buddies on the internet for Pocket PC's, 
but I think Megastar and The Sky for pocket PC is adequate.

Thats 1143 obscure planetary nebula cataloged, 100 down and 1043 more to 
observe, should take me no longer than another 10-15 years to observe them 
all.

Sorry to ramble, just wanted to share my thoughts and ideas with you all.

Until the big bright thing in the sky disappears for a few wekks, Clear 
skies to all!

Dave Aucoin

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