[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Since we're here...
In the last 10 days or so, I have:

Bought a Vixen 102mm refractor for myself (Relabeled Orion, with an adjustable front lens housing).

Finished tearing down and rebuilding the Super Polaris mount that I bought, for myself (except the legs, they need refinishing).

Finished tearing down and rebuilding a CG-5GT mount (Celestron Advanced GT). It moves, but the GoTo electronics are buggered. I might end up converting it to a regular dual axis powered CG-5 and flip it.

Continued to get my friends birthday present put together, a 6 inch Celestron Evolution with the StarSense autoaligner, and an Orion StarShoot imager that I had lying around. Found him a solar filter, a 45 degree diagonal so he can birdwatch with it, upgraded the firmware for both scope and alignment scope, and scrounged some sky charts. I still need to get the backlash dialed in and make sure that everything works, we've been pretty socked in lately. He'll be able to run it from his Ipad, which is pretty cool.

Finally sat down with my 1.5 CGE mounts. Put them on the workbench, grabbed one of my random NexStar hand paddles, found a power supply that came with my CGEM-DX, and...everything freaking works! I have the parts needed to complete the second mount coming, then I'll have 2 actual full CGE mounts that WORK! I fully expected that both of them would be basket cases that got sold for parts. I bought one out so someone's living room (that's a story, imagine a CGE on the tripod sitting in your living room for 3 years when you DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE THINGS WAS...The 1/2 mount I got from an Ebay recycler in Baton Rouge, it was from the University and must have been some sort of research project (I took the Megabus out there and back in one day, and smuggled about 90 pounds of telescope parts in my luggage).

Sounds like you've been busy!