From: "Randy Johnson" 
To: ,
        
Reply-To: "Randy Johnson" 


Hi Wes,
They are indeed the numbers to your mirror set.  When Jerry made the set
for his telescope he actually did four sets.  As a pro,Jerry mostly uses
test plates for fabricating his optics and the explanation that he gave me
was that it wasn't a lot harder for him to set up the machine and run four
sets of than it was to do one.  Test plates are of course the complimentary
masters for the surfaces of the optics and he just figured the work pieces
matching the plates to the surface until he obtained nice straight
interference lines when viewed under a monochromatic light source. Jerry
worked for a small but sophisticated manufacturer that makes many research
and military optics .  He had literally thousands of reference test plates
and the fabrication tooling available to manufacture them.  When he wanted
to make a telescope for his own use he would simply look up the
specifications for the design in his tooling and test plate catalog and
fabricate the optics to match the reference element and tools that were the
best match to the available tools and RE's. (This might sound like cheating
but since Jerry made a number of the RE's himself over the course of his
career it really wasn't)
Being an early riser, Jerry would come into the shop and run his telescope
projects before starting time while he brewed his coffee or made his
morning oatmeal on the hot plate that he would use for melting pitch.  His
co-workers (and sometimes his supervisor) would show up and hear the
machine running and come over and ask him what he was working on.  His code
answer delivered with a twinkle in his eye for whatever his current amateur
telescope making project at the time happened to be was, "Oh, just a
government project."
Your set of optics that Jerry donated as door prize matches exactly the
optics for the telescope that Jerry brought with him to display at the
conference in 2000, as it does a third set that he gave to me.  I had the
honor of shuttling Jerry to and from the airport in Seattle to the
conference in Bellingham.  Jerry stayed with my family the night after the
conference before flying out the next day.  Being the generous sort of guy
that he is, he boxed up another mirror and corrector set like  yours and
sent it my way saying something like, "What the heck am I going to do
with another telescope?"  (I have another friend who has seen his
garage which apparently is packed floor to ceiling with many of his past
projects as well tools and materials for future ones, so I know this to be
at least a little bit true.)
I have been busy with other TM projects and the general life that goes on
beyond telescope making (I probably can't mention that here,can I? ;^))
That said, both you and I were given stewardship of projects very worthy of
completion.  Maybe we can collaborate a bit to get both jobs done?  Thanks
for writing.

Wes Bielinski wrote:

Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 11:21:11 -0600
From: "Wesley Bielinski" 
Subject: RE: ATM Re: Maksutov Design Info

That's funny, those look like the numbers to my set of MakNewt Optics made
by Jerry, that I won at TOW 2000. I hope I can make it this year
(http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~skywise/optics.html Sunday 2:30) to see how to put
in together :-)

WES

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