Telescope Reviews: Ohio Never Ending Star Party (BEOTS), Part 7

Well Elekta got her first light , with me at the ep at least. there's a street light , stadium style outside my door , so only parts of the sky could be looked at.
The Andromeda galaxy was chosen as it was in the spot where the light couldn't get into the upper cage.
The atmosphere was lousy, wind blowing, but Elekta stood her ground and delivered.Later I looked at the Orion nebula, then back over to the double cluster, yeah Elekta destroyed the double cluster, lol.

This was one of those some good news ,some bad news nights.
I had originally planned to take her to a local remote control airplane club fields, and the weather forecast was good.But it clouded up badly, and I would have bet it was gonna rain so the scope stayed in the house.
Around 9 or so I was stepping out side to cool down from doing house work, and hey it was clear as a bell,grrrrrrrr, naturally.
Jupiter was rising, and would have been my main target, but you couldn't see it in the telescope for the light.
it was 78 degrees in the house, 50 degrees outside, so the mirror was warm, now when Jason sold elekta to me , he threw in a small brick battery, it was charged , he hooked it up and showed me how the three fans work,last night it was dead as a door nail.As noted above the atmosphere was so so, so a combination of bad atmosphere, and a hot mirror gave me bloated images. I'm so glad I'm older and wise enough to realize that, 30 years ago, the scope would have been junk, hehehehehehehehehehe.
I will need to find a small trickle charger for this battery ,apparently it discharges while setting.
I spent a few days playing with the truss tube locations, and finally set on what I believed was the best configuration, I was very happy to see , that after tearing down , carrying, and rebuild, the collimation was spot on.
It took me 12 minutes to set her up, and this was my first time, alone and in the dark, a good three or four minutes of that was fumbling with the shrouds Velcro attachment.
under eight to tear down.
The focuser will take some getting used to, its a helical focuser, with slide option, loosen the screw and the whole tube slides out, tighten it and use the helical function to fine tune.Several times I forgot to tighten the screw that holds the ep, and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't tweek in, and once forgot to tighten the slide lock, and as I pulled the ep, freaked out when the whole thing slid out at me.
The new 24mm ep, was good, but in the conditions last night ,I found the knight Owl 30mm a better match for the conditions.
This thing moves so easy I was moving the whole scope with out hardly any effort, I almost forgot there was this mammoth scope below me.
The scope optically performed flawlessly, the problems above were all mostly mine, minus the atmosphere.The Andromeda galaxy was to die for, and about two thirds of a field of view to the left was a very dim whisp, not sure if it was one of the three you should see , or if it was another galaxy I've never seen before, haven't checked.
Overall, very promising, Ill need to get better at my game,lol.

NOTE TO SELF: remove mirror box cover ,before you put on the shroud.
anyways there it is, three objects, that's poor I know, a series of mistakes by myself, a so so atmosphere.But enjoyable.

to do list:
find a step stool with wide treads
find a trickle charger for the battery
Motivate earlier so the poor scope can get away from the stadium light
Find a observing chair.

Edited by droid (11/11/12 07:23 AM)