Tecnosky 80/480 (1 Viewer)

Hello,

I have had this scope for quite some time, however I have been going through an agonizing time of not being able to log in to BF... Now after forever I have finally gotten through, with the help from support.

I bought the tecnosky 80/480 triplet, to try out skopebird photography. And now I have gotten a small collection of pics.

One of the first images from the scope, is from a winter visitor from the north. A hawk owl

And a tiger from the zoo, getting acquainted with the scope

An Oriole, Oriolus sinensis from Malaysia

Here a cobbersmith Barbet from Malaysia

Here a crop of the Barbet

a garden bird from the hotel in malaysia

Oriental Pied-hornbill, Malaysia

My only problem so far is the tripodfoot... it came loose and the threading in the Aluminiumframe on the scope, came bad... need to come up with an alternative... and my jobu gimbal is not really strong enough to keep the scope in place when fully extended

here you can see the tripodfoot, my solution this far has been taking the foot off and attaching the lensplate directly on the scope

ok... Flocking/Velour paper arrived from first light today... So how do i go about it... I am thinking about the focuser which seems most troublesome... Do I just flock it all and make holes for screws etc afterwards??? Cannot find any tutorials online :=)

Tube and dewshield flocked, it turned out to be so much easier to work with than expected.

1. Took out then one and only baffle, and painted it with a flat black weapon paint (similar to Krylon), and put it
back in place.
2. Cut 3 pieces of flockpaper, enough so they could overlap by about 2mm to each piece (not even sure it is
necessary with these small tubes. Fitted flockpaper on both sides of the baffle, I cut the paper 1cm too long
and cut it to length afterwards.
3. Dewshield flock, I just used 2pieces of paper here.
4. focustube, went fast....abit too fast - paper obstructed the connector piece from getting in, so had to
take the paper out and place it alittle further into the tube.
5. Camera connector - minor problem that the tube slants into smaller diameter. Instead of fighting with flocking
the slanted part, I painted it flat black, and just flocked the flat part.
6. Extensiontube, similar to the focustube.

When looking at astronomy sites on flocking, some take out the lenses and paint the sides black aswell - have not got the expertice to get into that - but dont be scared to flocking, it was a breeze ... now we just have to wait for good weather to try it out

Question: Some astronomers glue their flockpaper with superglue: have you guys done that aswell???

EDIT: I almost forgot, On the lens housing there was some kind of fabric, installed for the dewshield to move freely, that had to be taken off, now the flock replaces it.

I've coloured the sides of the lenses black on my SW80ED. It's a lot easier on this scope as it's a cemented doublet. The lens can be taken out and put back pretty much in the same orientation very easily. I wouldn't risk it on an air spaced triplet as you would risk upsetting any collimation of the lenses. I didn't notice any improvement in contrast after doing this.

Paul.