AP130 Version 0.5: Surprise - A Second Imaging Platform - Almost!
Date: August 31, 2019
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An Amazing Stroke of Luck!
The William Optics Rig had not been a cheap purchase by any means. But I have a kind of deal with my wife - I can pay for a new “toy” by selling off old ones. So I went through my stuff and put a bunch of things on eBay to sell. One of those things was a Sony Telephoto lens. It was purchased by a Gentleman that had been very pleasant to deal with. I mentioned that I was selling the lens to pay for a much larger lens - a telescope setup or Astrophotography. He mentioned that he had an interest in that once, bought all the gear but never got everything working to his satisfaction. All that gear was sitting in its original cases in his dining room and his wife was sick of it being there and told him that he could buy no more big toys until he got that stuff out of her dining room.
Would I have an interest?
I had just bought my first rig and really was not in the market for another. Then he sent me photos of what he had. An Astro-Physics 130mm Starfire? Wow! He bought a lot of accessories for it as well. there was a Losmandy mount, Nagler eyepieces, old CCD cameras, a Televue TV76 scope - it went on and on. It was really nice stuff and obviously well cared for. It seemed a shame to not have it in use. Since I was getting some early results with my own efforts, I offered to help him get these things up and going again.
He responded to this by saying that these days he had other interests. It was nice stuff but I told him I could not offer him a fair price for what he had. “So make an offer anyways”.
I talked to my wife and she agreed that it was a unique opportunity and it was OK if I went ahead and made an offer. Now - all I was really interested in was the two Refractors - so I made what I had feared to be a very low ball offer (I was very concerned that I would insult the gentleman). His response stunned me. He countered for a slightly higher price - but then said that this would get it all. “Get it All”. Get it All? I asked for clarification on what he meant by this. He said that I would get every piece of astronomical gear that he had - telescopes, 2” Diagonals, eyepieces, filter wheels, filters, old CCD cameras, All of the Losmandy gear - everything down to red flashlights.
Well - this was an amazing deal and I accepted right away. I live in Upstate New York and he lived in Missouri - He offered to meet me halfway and do the handoff. So that is what we did. My wife and I drove to Indiana and met him and his wife there. What an amazing and delightful couple! We did the exchange, went out to dinner, and both headed back home the next morning.
Really nice people - I still correspond with him and have helped him via Zoom with Photoshop and Lightroom where I can.
Things like this just do not happen to me - so this was extraordinary! I figured I had most of what I needed for a second telescope platform. And a new friend to boot!
Issues
I managed to assembled the Losmandy G-11 mount onto its tripod and updated some of the parts (this was a 20 years mount). Firmware updates and drivers were installed and I got everything working as it should. I added a Polemaster Polar Alignment Camera based on my experience with the Ioptron CEM60. The big question though - was how well would the mounting track? It seemed to take forever to get a clear sky - but that night finally came. I set up the mount, leveled it, and did the Polar alignment. Then I tried calibrating the GOTO drive on the scope and tried to do some slews. The drive motors kept stalling. It took a few days of worm gear adjustments, cleaning the clutches, and so on until the slew problem was resolved.
I waited for another night and tried again. This time I got far enough along to do PHD2 autoguider calibrations - and a new problem surfaced. The response of the drive was non-linear and the axes did not seem to be orthogonal! Calibrations failed and I realized that this mount - without some work - would not drive to the precision I needed. In addition - I was not crazy about the clutch system. You could calibrate the mount and then bump it and the pointing model would then be off. I do not have that issue with my other mount.
Also -there is the fact that I needed to get another camera to put this scope to work and after just buying TWO scope systems - I just did not have the resources to do that now. So the rig was put away until the following spring. The scope itself was magnificent - giving crisp high contrast views! I could not wait to put this to work!
I should note here that I did this check out over a year ago. Since then I have learned a lot about PHD2 and guide algorithms. While Losmandy is very different than my other mount I now feel that the Losmandy could be made to work out just fine. But in the summer of 2020 - I did not have the knowledge needed to understand that. So I think I have a future Losmandy-based project!
So here is where things stopped for that year:
Scope: Astro-Physics 130mm F/8.35 Starfire APO built in 2003
Guide Scope: Televue TV76 F/6.3 480mm APO Dublet
Mount: Losmandy G-11
Tripod: Losmandy Fixed Tripod
Camera: TBD
Guide Camera: TBD
