I'm a real beginner at this amateur astronomy stuff -- got my first scope,
an XT-8, in January and my second, an ETX-90 in April.

An older gentleman joined our astronomy club last summer and at our
Christmas party this week he told me that his son bought him a scope for
Christmas last year and that he has not been able to see anything with it
since he got it. It's a Tasco 114mm reflector on an EQ mount, sitting an a
tripod. I offered to come out and check the collimation. Just got back
from spending three hours at his home.

What a mess. First, I had to remove the primary and center-spot it,
re-install primary, and collimate the scope -- which was a real experience,
though it did collimate finally.

Then I attacked the mount -- I don't know a thing about EQ mounts but I
could tell this one had problems. Took it apart, put it back together,
snugging up nuts, bolts, screws, and whatever. Lined up the finder scope
with the main scope (very frustrating). Read the instructions with him and
figured out which knobs to turn to make it go up and down, then, figured out
how to polar align it for tracking.
Of course, none of this really matters because the tripod was not even worth
the name tripod.

Now I understand what you guys mean when you talk about avoiding department
store scopes. There should be a law against selling this junk.

I left with him my latest Orion catalog and gently pointed him to the 4.5-
and 6-inch Dobs -- he is 80 and could not carry anything bigger. Problem is
the Tasco was a gift from his son and he really can't replace it -- "Sorry,
son, you gave me a piece of **** for Christmas so I put it out for the
trash." I jokingly suggested that he could get another scope and hide it
when his son visits -- maybe he'll take the hint.

Sad. He's a very nice gent, wife died two years ago so he lives with his
old dog and his amateur radio equipment (for you hams out there, at age 80
he still copies 30 WPM in his head -- after working on the scope he and I
cranked up his old Drake gear with his Viking Matchbox antenna tuner feeding
an all-band doublet with twin-lead and made a few CW contacts on the low end
of 80). I'll probably haul my 8-inch Dob out to his home -- it's fairly
dark -- and let him see the difference.


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JAS