Chuck, I knew both Joe and Dave well and they helped me cut my teeth building science demo equipment for Hansen Planetarium in the late 70's and early 80's. I'd originally wanted to figure out a way to light-up (purely for low-power demo purposes) a liquid-fuel combustion chamber (we didn't have the complete exhaust bell) of a Titan II that we had on display. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and I was persuaded to down-size my ambition (and likelihood of death) by building a shoe-boxed size hydrogen-oxygen rocket engine using parts from my VW's ignition system and scraps of metal around the shop. I ended up building three of them, and they're still around being used in science demos. Times change. We do have a small shop here at Clark for maintaining the exhibits, but it's a major no-no to use it for personal projects. I'm seeing other binocular enthusiasts posting their designs for parallelogram-type mounts, as well as some pretty cool "reclining launch chair on a lazy-susan" type systems. Pretty inventive stuff. I've got to decide whether it's worth $600 to get a mount for my $250 binoculars. It may be better to sell them and apply the money to another telescope. Choices, choices, choices. Seth -----Original Message----- From: utah-astronomy-bounces+sjarvis=slco.org@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:utah-astronomy-bounces+sjarvis=slco.org@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of Chuck Hards Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 4:18 PM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: RE: [Utah-astronomy] 25x100mm binos Thank you, sir. I don't know if you have a machine-shop at the new planetarium, but years ago I would sometimes enlist the talent of Joe Starr (no kidding), one of the machinists at Hansen planetarium, for some of my astronomical hardware requirements. A terrific machinist whom I'm sure is now retired. He left SL County to work for Disney many years ago. There was also a Dave Campbell on-staff, if memory serves, who did some excellent machine work for me, as well. If you still have a staffed machine-shop, there's all the facility you need to produce top-notch parallelogram binocular mounts right in your own offices. Just show them some photos of good designs and they can probably take it from there. --- Seth Jarvis <SJarvis@slco.org> wrote:
Chuck, that's perfect. Impressive stuff. Thanks!
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