The tube of my 8" f6 Cave takes up the majority of the usable space in the back seat of my Dakota extended cab, which has been fine for shorter trips with our camper, but my wife isn't willing to put up with that for the duration of our upcoming 2 week trip to Baja over Christmas. So I set out to make an inexpensive refractor that would take up less space, and accomplished it for $50. But a serendipitous afterthought led to an upgrade that is adding another $200 to the total investment. I ordered a 80x900 objective with plastic cell from Surplus Shed for $30, and a 1 1/4" focuser for $10, and kept my expectations low. I don't understand how "surplus" can be back-ordered, but a delay in getting the focuser caused me to wait two weeks for my order. Meanwhile, while on the prowl at the U Property Distribution center, looking for a cheap microscope for a customer in Idaho, I bought (for myself) a Zeiss stereo microscope for $100. The binocular head on it has a striking family resemblance with the Tele-Vue Bino-Vue as described in the Sept. 2002 S&T, and costing $1,050. When the objective and focuser arrived, I invested another $8 in 3" black plastic pipe and fittings at Home Depot, and $2 for black felt at Michael's, for a total of $50. I already had a star diagonal and eyepieces, and used some CDs for the glare stops. I've cobbled together a couple of small refractors before, but this is actually the first one with a real focuser, rather than just a "push-pull" on the eyepiece, so I'm quite the neophyte ATM. Recent cloudiness has prevented much evaluation of the lens, but "star" testing on tiny Christmas lights at about 150 yards shows spherical aberration. I know some of you (Chuck?) are good at, and seem to enjoy, optical evaluation, so if there is any interest is learning what you get for $30, let's meet. And this is where I can use some help. Over the Thanksgiving holidays, I machined a brass 1 1/4" adapter to allow use of the 45 degree angled bino-head. Initial use with microscope eyepieces showed promise, so yesterday I machined 2 adapters to allow use of 1 1/4" eyepieces. I have an eclectic collection of eyepieces, most of which are 50 years old and came with the 1954 Cave, so I don't know how eyepieces with wider views and/or greater eye relief (I wear glasses) will work in this possibly vignetted RubeGoldbergScope. Does anyone with a more recent collection of eyepieces care to help me make a selection? And perhaps try the bino-viewer on a better scope (it takes a lot of inward focus movement). Buying pairs of eyepieces can quickly blow my budget, so I may initially have to settle for only one focal length, too. The $50 Orion Expanse (66 degree) sound attractive at this point, but I'd hate to throw away $100. I could make 2 more telescopes for that money! ;-) Thanks, Bob Grant 273-0369