Scattered Thoughts . . .

The new saddle for my new SolarQuest mount arrived this morning...  finally (USPS shipping is horrendous) ...  so I spent a little time upgrading the mount this morning.  I did a bit of work upgrading it yesterday too but I had been waiting for this new saddle to arrive for quite a while and I finally got that done this morning. In the photo, below, you can see the original saddle that came already installed on the SolarQuest mount.  I've had some bad experiences with this type of saddle...  the cast aluminum tends to crack and break eventually, the single bolt damages dovetail bars, and the single bolt isn't a secure as it should be...  so I wanted to replace it with a better one to keep my telescopes as secure as possible. In this next photo, you can see the new replacement saddle.  It is a much heavier duty saddle and it is actually a large clamp to hold the telescope rather than just a single bolt holding the telescope in place.  Replacing this saddle was easy when the new

I 'm still feeling rather lousy and coughing whenever I move so I'm laying low at home.  This morning, however, I accomplished a few small maintenance tasks on my astronomy gear.   First, I wanted to install a better saddle on my newly converted EXOS2 manual mount (photo at right).  I don't care for saddles with a single bolt holding my telescope on the mount.  I prefer two pressure clamps holding my telescopes.  I had ordered an appropriate saddle a few weeks ago and it arrived this past week.  I just needed to drill a hole and then assemble it so that was a small and easy task that proved to be unremarkable.  Then I moved to my best telescope.  My Explore Scientific 102mm APO refractor recently developed a sticky focuser.  It wasn't sticking to a complete stop but it was not as smooth as I like it.  Any bit of stickiness in the focuser causes some vibration in your view so I new I wanted to resolve this little problem before I got worse.  This task was a little more i

W e've done a lot of walking over the past week which has resulted in my ankle and knee swelling up again so I'm laying a bit low lately.  To recap, back in January, I first sprained my ankle badly enough that I could not put any weight on my left leg at all.  That required about four months to heal well enough to do some things again.  However, the four months of hobbling around with all my weight on my right leg only resulted in a sprained MCL (medial collateral ligament) on the side of my right knee.  The knee injury was mostly better until we did miles and miles of walking this past week.  Now my knee is painful and swollen again so I am now back to ice and elevation for a good chunk of each day.  My left ankle is a bit painful too but nothing like my right knee. Putting my health problems aside, I always try to accomplish something, anything, each day.  Mostly, I've spent my time at the piano lately but I have managed to squeeze in a few other little things too.  Time