evans@mhuxt.UUCP (crandall) (07/14/85)
A few years ago I was able to go to the Riverside Telescope Makers conf at Camp Oakes (near Big Bear Lake in CA). Some of these people are truely hardcore and seem to build for the sake of building. There were 3 or 4 scopes in the 20"+ class - with only one of them being a Coulter Dobsonian (the 29" monster). The difference between the "little" 17" Coulters and the monster are amazing. The Whirlpool showed all kinds of structure - it was almost like looking at a nice photograph!! The 29" did not have any kind of drive, but rather the classic Coulter style mount. It isn't too obnoxious, but you do need a good low power finder, a stable ladder (you are about 10 or 11' up at times), and some practice. There were also some smaller homemade cassegrains and newtonians that were brought in on trailers. When I first asked for info on large scopes these are the types I was interested in. One was terrific - the guy built the mount out of fiberglased styrofoam. I can't remeber the exact size - 22 or 24" seems about right. The thing was transportable in his station wagon weighing only 200 pounds or so. He had great stories about curing the mount in a rented sauna -- believe it or not he had only been an ATM for a year and this was his 2nd scope (he didn't like using averted vision). Sky and Telescope was there and was crawling over the beast and I imagine that you cold find photos of it in issues after May 83 (when the star party was) - I have a big hole in my S&T library and haven't seen anything. If one has the ability to build something like this oen is left with some- thing reasonably transportable with a real mount and fantastic light gathering capability. Can anyone report on more recent Riverside parties? Steve Crandall ihnp4!mhuxt!evans
josh@polaris.UUCP (Josh Knight) (07/16/85)
In article <982@mhuxt.UUCP> evans@mhuxt.UUCP (Steve Crandall) writes: >... >... Can anyone report on more recent Riverside parties? Both the Riverside Telescope Makers Conference and its older sibling Stellafane (held next month in Springfield, Vermont) are reported on each year in S&T, usually in an issue 3 or so months after the conference. Usually lots of pictures. All the more recent Stellafanes have featured many large Dobsonians. Josh Knight, IBM T.J. Watson Research josh at YKTVMH on BITNET, josh.yktvmh.ibm-sj on CSnet, ...!philabs!polaris!josh