Telescope Reviews: Just bought me an 8" Cave Lightweight Deluxe

Ooo! Didn't get the retina intensifier effect, fortunately! LOL!

When I had it set up and balanced as well as I could, it didn't seem to be tracking very well. I had just the RKE 28mm on Jupiter, which was only about 15 degrees up when I tried gee-whizzing it, so it's possible it wasn't tracking at all, though it did seem to stay in the eyepiece for a while. View was okay, but with so little magnification it's hard to say much. The mirror was still filthy at that point, and I haven't taken the secondary out yet.

I'm going to have to look at those paint colors again more closely in daylight. I think the pier looks to have been repainted. It's kind of an ugly gold with a greenish cast - almost exactly like my Angel fish tank I had when I was a teenager.

One weird thing: The Dec circle seems huge (6") and there's no pointer. Where would that have been to be useful? It's not even tight enough not to spin on the shaft. They sure are purdy, though.

I have GOT to add a dec slo mo to this thing. Can originals be located, or will I have to make something? I might actually prefer putting a worm gear dec slo mo on it instead of a tangent arm. It's tempting to replace the AC motor in the RA drive (keeping all the original parts, of course) with a pittmann servo system and using my Sidereal Technology controller with it and have an Astrola Goto! ...but more than likely I'll just get the original drive working, use a good old AC drive corrector for it, and do what I can for the Dec in a way that doesn't look to non-stock.

Cause I have to admit, this thing is growing on me. Even in the dark (maybe especially in the dark?) it was kinda purdy out there under the sky... ...I mean, the clouds!

Clint. I can't find any writing on the mirror, but I didn't take it out of the cell yet, since I didnt' want to mess with the collimation for my first peeks. But it's reassuring to hear that Robert's mirror also is ground flat on the back.

I was thinking somewhere around 1970 or maybe a couple years later. When I bought my OC Discoverer from Dick Nelson in 1972, it had that finder on it, like I said. And I remember him saying something like "I couldn't get our regular finder, which was out of stock, but I like this one a lot" He wouldn't tell me where he got it, though. And it seems Cave sometimes used the same supplier.

The end rings are also basically identical to the ones that were on my '72 OC, only those were painted black. Could they have come from the same place, though?

I'm thinkin'... This could be fun to restore.

But guys, are these mounts as wobbly as this one seems to be (at least before I tweak things that might be tweakable)?

-tim.