I've actuually had that happen (my fault entirely) a few weeks back, and the 8" SCT OTA (no CCD though) hit the ground. It had rained and my backyard grass was very, very soft so OTA landed safely!

Hi Mark, Good point you have made here. Yes, I totally agree with what you have said. Any time a DOVELM, or a similar Doveplate arangement is used (AP or Losmandy) A safety stop bolt should

I forgot to mention in my report, that this incident was 100% my fault for not double checking the tightness of the DOVE15's knobs. I proceeded to crank down so hard with my "hand tightening" after

Roland I have not been able to diagnose if the ST8E guider is causing the star to move due to how the guiding software parameters are set up, software problem etc or the 900 is causing it due to how

Ted I found your trouble shooting notes very interesting particularly the PEC comments. I have been using an AP900GTO for 2 years now to do CCD imaging. Most of the imaging has been done using an ST7

w11806@... writes: In order to minimize the guider control of the mount, I usually do the setup at 1x, then turn the guide rate down to .5x. After all, the mount does not make large

Richard, The new chip will be allow increased RA precision hh:mm:ss.s This will give you better accuracy for "move" and "jog". According to my understanding from Software Bisque, you should have

Marj, I can not get the full RA and DEC precision when using the "Move" or "Jog" NSEW buttons in TheSky 5.00.12. I asked the Bisques about this a while back and they said it was normal because I did

Last night I found out how extremely important the end bolt on the 15" slider bar is to the safety of my telescope(s). I had just finished balancing my setup on the 900 GTO and was performing

w11806@... writes: Question, is the guiding chip sending a correction signal to the mount, causing the RA to speed up and therefore move the star? Are you using a relay box by any chance

Greetings, have an idea and was wondering if someone could steer me in the right direction to get/have it built. Now that I have a Traveler w/ the 7" top slider to hold a camera or TV starbeam or

Yes, the older chips work very well with v5.00.012 of TheSky. When you chose the AP driver, you will be in hh:mm:ss format. The only feature that you will not be able to use from TheSky is the park

Does anyone know if the final version of TheSky v 5.00.012 now accepts the hh:mm:ss format of the old chip as well as hh:mm:ss.s format of the new chip? I am still using the old chip and just

Hi Greg, Thanks for sharing the pics. Nice to see how well the Super Adaptoid Plate works. I especially like the side by side setup! Pretty cool. Mark

Hey if you guys want to check out some really first class setups see http://www.muellersatomics.com/users.htm -- == Greg Mueller Port Gamble, Washington Amateur Astronomer, Machinist,

At the moment, the programmer is up to his gills in a major upgrade project, but I hope to find some time in a few months to add features to the AP GTO plug-in. I'll contact you at that time about it.

Next time, I'll take some Prosac before trying that slew again. Should have though a bit more before hitting the ECU slew scope command! No harm done this time though. Dave Lane (ECU author) is

Robin, Actually, I look at this a little differently. I think it is less work to develop one universal safe zone routine that anyone, with any mount, can utilize, rather than deal with 10 mounts that

I understand how this came about -- the logic is in the Keypad which is unavailbable to RS-232 commands -- but it is unfortunate. It increases the cost of supporting the Astro-Physics mounts for

Thanks very much. Robin Casady http://www.CarmelCoast.com Casady & Greene, Inc. http://www.casadyg.com