Oregon Star Party Telescope Walkabout for 2002

telescopes that put ideas into practice

by Mel Bartels with pictures by Greg Babcock and Barbara Bajec

Every year we hold a telescope walkabout at the Oregon Star Party. About 200 people walk from scope to scope as a group, hearing from the scope's builder the fine points of each telescope. Conducted in a friendly non-judging manner, we discover the latest ideas being put into practice, what works and what can be improved.

Steve Vegos 16 inch from Ashland OR with Richard Schwartz/PLOP designed mirror cell: 9 point with central point and 8 surrounding points in a circle

Sonny Tremalt 16 inch with number of features: central hub power underneath the rocker, rotating upper ring, spring counterweight, laptop platform with red box filter

Fred Phillips 20 inch split ring

Ross Roberts' computerized/motorized 10 inch (Ross is not in the picture)

Dave Sopchak all aluminum 18 inch with ultra thin porthole hand figured mirror; MacDOB computer drive system installed (Dave is a MacDOB software guru): Dave is pulling off the spray-on blue protective coating

Mel Bartels and his new mount design, called the TriDob: 6 inch and 20 inch prototype: the forward section of the altitude bearings folds up against the mirror box face resulting in a very compact mirror box, of half standard height, while the back section of the altitude bearings is consolidated into a single tail fin; 6 truss support and triangular truss upper end with wire spider on the 20 inch

Dan Peterson's fixed eyepiece 6 inch: perfect for sit down observing; a metal counterweight in the upper end balances the tube

Frank Sczcepanski's 8 inch side saddle binocular telescope: one mirror is placed behind the other by an average of people's interpupillary distance, and given a larger diagonal; images are easily merged by knobs at the front of the scope that adjust the aim of a primary mirror

Oregon Star Party Telescope Walkabout for 2002

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