Just to further Alan's point here, in my experience, starfinders actually
have pretty good primaries. I've never owned a "whole" starfinder, but the
optics in my 16 are from one, and it (informally) star tests quite well.
I think you can probably expect quite a lot of tinkering and frustration to
get one of these working really well, but it likely won't fail due to
optics.
Pete
-----Original Message-----
From: sf-bay-tac-bounces@No-Spam [mailto:sf-bay-tac-bounces@No-Spam] On
Behalf Of Alan Zaza
Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 6:47 PM
To: The Astronomy Connection
Subject: Re: [TAC] meade lightbridge. Was BIG dob recs
I have a Meade Lightbridege 12" Standard model and I think it's excellent.
I don't want people to get the wrong idea about this scope. All mass
produced scopes don't work great "out-of-the box", but with a little
tinkering can be made to work very well. For instance, I replaced the stock
mirror springs and now it holds collimation very well. I also added plastic
washers to the base and replaced the felt and azimuth bearings with virgin
teflon. The motions are as smooth now as any Dob I have tried. The optics
are figured very well with an excellent star test. Saturn snaps into focus
at 300X. I also flocked the upper cage and mirror section, as well as
painting all white surfaces you can see down the tube black. It has
excellent contrast now. So with a little work up front, this can be an
excellent scope. Mine is a keeper.
-- What TAC Is About. http://www.observers.org/Join.shtml Webcam, DSLR, CCD Imaging use NorCal AI. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/norcal_ai/ Designing and improving TAC's website. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/tac-ops/ Sub-scribe or Unsub-scribe from TAC http://seds.org/mailman/listinfo/sf-bay-tacReceived on Thu Nov 30 20:07:25 2006