Richard Harding wrote:
I will be in Toronto all next week, and will pick up a Pulsar unit for
myself. If anyone else wants one, I could oblige...let me know. Hey, if
there were a few, I could probably negotiate a deal!! :o)
Seems like there is getting to be a fair amount of interest in these things.
Although I did not have time for real observing last night, took a few minutes
for a star test of the Telrad through the trees in my backyard.
The modification does work very nicely, and with the pulser on it is very
easy to position a faint star to any point in the bullseye - even right on
one of the red circles. With the pulser off, it is a normal Telrad, and the
faint stars get lost any time they are close to a red circle.
To anyone who gets one, the installation is easy, but be aware that with
it installed you switch from using 2 AA batteries to using one 9 volt
battery. This is implicit in the installation instructions, but it
is easy to miss if you think it is a trivial and obvious modification.
Having been in electronics too long, I did not read carefully and simply
assumed that the same battery would be used. The result was that normal
Telrad operation was not restored when the switch was flipped.
After a lot of poking around and meter checking to find out what was
wrong I finally admitted defeat. Then read the instructions more
carefully - bingo! The light went on! Wired in the correct battery and
everything worked as it should. It's actually easier to install it
right - just don't cut off the supplied 9 volt battery connector and
solder the leads to the old battery pack as I did.
The moral of the story - no matter how trivial or obvious a job
appears to be, be careful not to make wrong assumptions.
Good luck with getting and installing the pulser units.
Cheers - Al
