Those new to this list may be interested to know that in addition to being U-A's Curmudgeon-in-Chief (now that Chuck's back I had to relinquish that title), Chuck is also quite the ATMer having build many scopes over the years including making by hand (no power tools) the large white finder on SPOC's Ealing. And, if memory serves, he rebuilt and fixed up the Ealing to the point that if it's owner ever comes looking for it (technically it's on loan to SPOC) they'd never recognize it. patrick On 24 Jul 2011, at 22:15, Joe Bauman wrote:
Neat, Chuck! ________________________________ From: Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2011 8:15 PM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Solar set-up
I recently dis-assembled my old astrophoto platform, a 25-year-old hodgepodge based on a light-duty Asian-manufactured mount of the era. A precursor to the EQ-2, with home-made dec slow motion.
I returned it to it's original condition and just for kicks one day stuck the PST on there.
I customarily use the TeleTrack mount for the PST- but I may not anymore.
The little equatorial was a breeze to set-up. Latitude is pre-set, adjust it fairly level, get it within ten degrees of north, and it tracks the sun as well as the little GoTo, at the low powers used on the PST. In about two minutes I was set up and observing. No more punching of keys to initialize a GoTo computer. It was a breath of fresh-air.
The mount has a good synchronous RA drive, and I put the manual dec knob on there. Perfect adjustment control with an old drive corrector, but honestly it tracks great at the sidereal rate on just house current or an inverter.
I may be just using the TeleTrack at night only from now on.
Pics:
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii24/JethroTull1958/PSTEQU01.jpg
http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii24/JethroTull1958/PSTEQU02.jpg