2 replies to this topic

[Yomamma]

I had my 12" SCT out for the first time the other night.

 

When I went to break it down the next morning I noticed I had forgotten to turn the heat strip up and the entire front glass is covered in dew and my subframes were crap.  I had put the dew shield on and had plugged my heater strip into the wrong heater outlet and I did not have that channel turned up.  It was set on about 1/4 power but apparently that was not enough to keep the glass clear.

 

This got me to thinking as to how much heat will I need to apply to the heat strip to keep the glass clear on a 12" SCT?

 

I have a Pegsus power box that I can use to control the strip and I also have the manual tuner that you just turn the dial up, which is what I had on at the time.  There is a lot of surface area and maybe just turning the dial up to 100% will do the trick but I want to make sure that whatever I do it gets rid of the dew.  I live in high humidity so everything gets wet at night.

 

I would prefer to use the Pegasus but not sure if that will do the job. 

 

Has anyone used the Pegasus auto dew heater function on a large SCT and what was the result?

 

Any other suggestions?

[Mbenj2405]

I have the same setup as you, Meade 12" with Pegasus V2 UPB. I use the Astrozap heater. I've found that leaving it on at 90% works a charm with the dew shield. I live in a high humidity environment as well.

[bill.beauchemin]

I don't have a sct but I use a wanderer power box pro on each of my setups. I use a temp differential. If the dew point is 45° I set my dew heaters to at least 10° above the dew point. The power box pro can monitor the dew point and the temp of the dew strip.