The Griffin Telescope at the Alafia River State Park in February 2008. Even with significant sky glow the views were beautiful. The Telrad was pretty close to the focuser so I used a strip of neoprene glued as a upside down 'U' to go over the pointy tips of the Telrad to prevent anyone from mistaking it for the eyepiece in the dark.
John Dobson (yes, the guy that the Dobson telescope mount is named after) visited our camp area and gave his opinion of the Griffin. He said that it was too fancy, but otherwise okay. Please excuse my fourth day of camping look here.
The First Light plaque on the Griffin telescope.
With most of the parts cut out it was time to see what they looked like dry fitted together. The trunnions looked like they would be the correct distance apart and, amazingly, they were parallel to each other when a very small gap was left between the tube rings and the tube for felt inside the tube rings. The hinge width, not shown, will be important. The latches will go on the wood blocks seen between the tube rings. They will use adjustable draw latches from McMaster-Carr (part 13435A63).
This was my first foray into using Birch Plywood. The Birch was really heavy so I added quite a few cutouts, which dulled the router bits fast. One quarter inch thick Oak plywood was added to the outside to allow the 1" thick trunnions a full seat. The intent was to contrast the lighter Birch with the Oak. This worked, with one unexpected side effect...
When the rocker box was flipped over the alien head becomes obvious. Sadly, the Griffin telescope has never seen any LGM (little Green Men).
I'm one of the first to try out the new Sky Commander XP4 Flash models (received Jan 2005). After I fixed a bad encoder cable and stopped the central bolt from slipping it worked perfectly.
Nov 2005 Update: The Sky Commander is now wireless to the PC.
Here's the inside of the Sky Commander XP4. The left side controls the display and buttons and the right side houses the power, serial and encoder interfaces and the CPU. It's powered by a Motorola 3MHz MC68HC11F1CFN3 CPU. The socketed memory chip is a M27C1001-12C1 with 128K of flash ROM.
The secondary holder is made of PVC and metal strips. Two of the veins conduct the 12v power for the three 470 ohm resisters (in parallel) that connect to a home made controller for dew prevention. The pail is at a 45 degree angle and allows me to glue on the secondary mirror while it is horizontal.
Griffin, the kitty that this telescope was named after, passed away on April 9th, 2021. He loved to climb through the tube as the telescope was being built. Words cannot express how much he was loved and will be missed.
