From: "Dwight K. Elvey" 
To: atm{at}shore.net
Reply-To: "Dwight K. Elvey" 


>From: "DAVID K OESTREICH" 
>
---snip---
>>
>quite the contrary John was perfectly happy with the idea of an F8 scope.
>He seems to favor longer focal lengths. There were some very fundamental
>differences in his thinking and what most folks are doing today. Mirror
>cells made of cardboard and friction focusers made of sink drains is
hi-tech
>according to John.
>Truss scopes are completely out according to him. Give him carboard tube
any
>day.
Hi
 Sounds like you two hit it off right away. I'm not
surprised that it didn't work out as you expected. It may have worked
better if you'd just made your first scope with the cardboard and such. It
sounds like you may have been missing much of the lessons that John was
trying to teach. You saw what he was doing as junk. He saw you as wasting
your time. You were both likely some wrong and some right but both too
stubborn to admit it. Although, John's telescopes are not the finest
looking things I've seen, I've also been impressed by the results of many
of his telescopes(Optically).
 I suspect from the sounds of things, you were not one
of the types that takes suggestions well. There are many ways to make
mirrors. Most surprisingly work well. Mixing methods often result in things
not coming out as expected.
 John doesn't make truss telescopes. I wouldn't expect
to get advise from him on how to do it.
 I would suspect that he was happy with the F/8 simply
because he didn't want to deal with helping you bring it back to a F/6. By
this stage you both had a bad taste for each other.
 As for truss vers cardboard tube, even those that make
truss telescopes will tell you that there are advantages to making
cardboard tube telescopes, especially for someone making their first
telescope. The tubes are rigid enough to have little problems with flexure.
Baffling is almost automatic and not an after thought. Mirror dewing is not
a large issue. If you'd followed resent discussions, you'd have heard about
things like resonance of wind blowing through truss setups. The onlt
overwelming advantage of truss systems is that one can make a more easily
portable telescope.
 Probably most important, a person that really doesn't
know what they are doing can make a working sono tube telescope from simple
instructions.
 From this point, you can either hack at the mirror your
self or try one of the suggested locations for help. Both will eventually
get to a mirror that will meet your expectations. I'm not sure what I'd
recommend for you. While reading from this news group for advise is good,
none of us are actually looking at your mirror or what you are doing.
Just my thoughts
Dwight

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