KevS

Hello and welcome from cloudy, foggy and now snowy Lincolnshire.

With my AP skills Vicki anything above average is a bonus🙄

Very nice result for such a short iteration. 👍

Very nice image, as above star colours are brilliant.👍

🙄I don't think s0 for the rest of the week.

I always keep my expectations low to avoid disappointment. 🤣

Nice capture, It's really good when a "lets try this" moment goes well.👍

I have a focus cube; I fitted the supplied bracket to a separate dovetail itself fitted to the top holes on the rings of the refractor. I bought in a timing belt pulley with the same pitch as the thumbwheel on the focuser and use a timing belt to connect them. On the "upper" dovetail I also have the guide scope, power distribution box, usb hub and dew heater controllers. The upper dovetail is attached with thumbscrews. I made this assembly to be deliberately modular in nature so I don't have to set up the entire imaging rig in one go. Also, when the muse is upon me, so to speak; I can leave the upper dovetail off and just do a bit of boggling.

Got some orange bits, but I would hazard a guess on no go this week.

Have any of you Cambridge bods been out to Wicken Fen? The car park there was pretty dark.

+1 for the above.

If I was forking out that much on a hobby, it would have sails.😂

I used PTFE/Moly grease that I use for my bike wheels, the bearings I replaced were the most important factor, I used "P4" class SKF class bearings. (Taper needle bearings) I wanted to use P5's ( traceable) but they would have cost more than the mount. Fortunately the P4 class sets were readily available "free" from contacts within industry. There appeared to be some spalling on the mount castings due to possible movement/vibration of the original outer races, as a consequence "641" bearing lock was used to assist location after the inner castings were "popped". End float/preload was achieved using a digital DTI allowing for the stretch in both Dec and Ra shafts. The following may be of use. Principles of bearing selection and application | SKF | SKF K

The design is as you say "quite ingenious". Very reminiscent of the old Unitron folded refractor; think they only did a 3" but stand to be corrected. The idea of a 21" frac seems enthralling, but I hasten that justifying the $300,000 for "command" approval would take some doing.

Hi Mark, welcome aboard.