Accessories for the telescope.

Accessories for the telescope.

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I went back to the Discovery Store to find they now had discounted the Meade accessories by 40%. I picked up a series 4000 9.7 Super Plossi lens for just under $30. I went back to the store later that day to pick up a 45 degree erecting prism, for $25.00, not for my scope but I wanted to try it. I got a telenegative Barlow Lens for $26.50, and a Series 4000 12.4mm Super Plossi lens. I already had a regular 12.4mm and 9.7mm but had read that the 4000 glass was superior. This 12.4 model 4000 lens cost $29.40.

The store manager was in the store for my second visit and I asked about the CCD camera deal for buying a new telescope. She told me I could have one if I were to drive to her Mission Viejo store. It would cost me one penny. I jumped in my truck and tore down the 57 to the 5 freeway and landed in that store within 45 minutes. They had the Deep Sky Imager Pro with AutoStar Suite waiting for me and the cost was one penny.

$10,000 Cat.

$10,000 Cat.

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After we had our cat, Whiskers, put to sleep, my wife and I had time to reflect upon our decisions. It was not pretty. We totaled up out costs and they amounted, on paper, to be $9,931.56 and we ended up with a dead cat.

  • Critical Care unit charges: $6,276.56. Housing the cat, x-rays, medications, evaluations, etc..
  • Surgery charges: $3,655.00

Also the time involved was significant. I had to feed, give medications and a shot every four hours a day.

Medications, syringes, preperation materials.

Whiskers would have accidents from time to time and I had to clean up those. We are still suffering from cat urine smell in our down stairs bathroom. I actually decided to skip the 2 am slot by working around the schedule of mediations and just did not give the cat any food for that slot of time. The feeding could take a half hour or more and at five feedings this amounted to using up two to three hours a day for a cat. The reason for this long feeding schedule is I had to mix the medications up. Pills had to be ground and blended with water and put into small syringes.

Using pill container to grind up pills to powder.

I had to blend the food with water in a blender so I could get the food into large syringes.

This shot shows one of the plates full of medications and food ready to give to Whiskers a number of times a day.

Previously blended food came from the refrigerator and thus had to be heated in the microwave. I had to move the cat into the feeding space. When I sat down beside the cat, I draped towels around me as the PEG tube some times would explode (it had two ports). I had to pull out stomach contents from the cat to see how much he had left in the stomach using the PEG tube. Pushing the food into the PEG tube could take 10 minutes or more. A few times I had to take a shower and clean a room up after the PEG tube exploded. Not calculated in the total cost was the significant drive time to and from the Critical Care unit, a half hour drive one way. Another cost was the special food diet. It took me half a day to find the correct food because our prescription was wrong and the food listed did not exist. Finally, I guess our first mistake was allowing a teenager to decide on the fate of the cat. If my daughter had paid half or more of the cost, I think the decision would have been different.

Added charges of gas costs running too and from the Critical Care facility and buying special prescription cat food probably made this the ten thousand dollar cat.

We paid for an autopsy on Whiskers in an effort to help progress the understanding of this type of problem. The report came back stating that the surgeon had left a small sponge inside the cat. When the surgeon found out about this, he gave me a call to tell me his mistake and apologize. We both decided that this had NO effect upon Whiskers.

Recommendation: The surgery group told us that their track record was 80 percent success. The Internet gave the odds well below 50. There are a LOT of cats needing a home and throwing almost ten thousand dollars to save a cat now seems a bit ridiculous. It is somewhat cruel to say this but although Whiskers was part of the family, we should have let go.

Lighting Instrument Repair – Grounding

Lighting Instrument Repair – Grounding

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Problem defined

Grounding of professional lighting instruments is an ongoing problem that is being perpetuated with no resolution in sight. This is a real problem for a number of reasons. The first and foremost is that the manufacturer employ manufacturing methods that I believe are cost cutting and thus lead to inferior grounding integrity of most lights.

Another possible cause arises out of the history of lights and how they were used for studios. Most of the lighting fixtures used in the motion picture industry up to the 1980’s used dc power and not ac. For this reason, most lights were powered with two wire. One major lighting manufacturer representative told me that his company did not start grounding their lights until the 80’s.

There is a lot of economic pressure to manufacture instruments at a good price point to maintain market share. There are a number of manufacturers that put out a product that seems to function well at at reasonable cost. This puts pressure upon the more upscale manufacturers to follow cost cutting manufacturing and not improve safety because it is not a factor that people ask for. People shop for function, what will the light do, vs. how much will it cost. Almost no one shops for lighting instrument safety.

Faulty manufacturing methods:

Principal fault is the painting of all metal surfaces prior to putting the instrument together. The paint acts as an insulator between metal surfaces. Another incredible lapse of good safety construction is not removing the paint at the ground point. I find that the screw or rivet where the ground wire is connected measures a good ground but that connection path stops at that connector due to the painted surface.

Some lighting instruments manufacturers choose a ground point close to the light socket. This location, one could argue, is not the best location for operator safety in case an instrument becomes compromised.

Most all models of lighting instruments fail to include grounding straps from the ground point outward toward the lighting instrument shell. The grounding is adequate at some point inside the instrument but as one proceeds outward the measured resistance increases, in many cases drastically.

Cheap materials, incomplete manufacturing process, and inferior materials are used for grounding.

  • Nuts and screws are occasionally used that rust.
  • The surface which the ground lug is attached is sometimes not bare metal but some form of metal oxidation or rust is found or can develop in the future.
  • Star washers are not used when appropriate, to bite into the metal under the ground wire connector lug.
  • The use of dissimilar metals for grounding is some times used. We find aluminum against steel.
  • Pop rivets come loose for some reason. If this occurs after manufacture and sale, then the liability becomes the owner of the instrument and not that of the manufacturer.
  • Pop rivets do not have metal washers applied to the reverse side to further the metal contact of the ground.
  • The lack of grounding straps, is always missing, to extend any single point ground continuity to other parts of the instrument body.

List of problem manufacturers:

  • Feather Lights, I have had to disassemble these instruments and remove paint to allow these lights to be used.
  • Packaged Lighting has a tendency to ground near the light socket but because their are a number parts in-between the ground point and the outside case, the grounding continuity is in jeopardy getting to the outside instrument case. I have used grounding straps to extend the ground.
  • Colortran models LQBM-10, VARI 10, very old lights, failed to remove paint under the ground point. This requires instrument disassembly and sanding the point at which the instrument is grounded on both metal sides and reassembled. This takes about 20 minutes to complete per instrument.
  • Mole Richardson is one of my favorite lighting instruments due to its fine heavy duty construction and wonderful light control. This manufacturer at times paints the metal and then puts the instruments together impeding the case ground. Baby Solarspot model has a ground point at a switch box but this ground is not maintained to the body of the instrument. The manufacturer did have clean metal to metal contact from switch box to instrument but the ground point, at the switch, did have paint under the large round ground washer.
  • Junior Solarspot model also provided a painted body that failed to allow complete case ground. These instuments are rather old. I do not claim that instruments purchased after had the same problem.

Theory behind a new standard

The grounding of equipment we are trying to achieve safety for the user. We hope that if a hot wire is allowed to touch the light it will do so inside the metal instrument case. The case must be completely grounded so when the wire touches the case, the circuit breaker will trip shutting down the power. The problem with this scenario is the case is seldom at ground potential. From my experience, only one small point in the instrument is properly grounded if at all.

Using ohms law it can be calculated that a resistance of 5 or more ohms will keep the circuit breaker from tripping while the lighting instrument is at electrocution level. It is not uncommon to measure above 5 ohms on the bare metal outside points of most lighting instruments.

The factors that one uses in making an accurate calculation as to when a circuit breaker will trip are not exact. The house power fluctuates above and below the nominal expected voltage. The current at which the circuit breaker trips is not exact. We have not even calculated the IR loss between the instrument power connector and fuse panel. For these reasons this standard might change with further investigation.

Standard

There does not seem to be any standard for grounding a lighting instrument. For this lack of standard I have taken it upon myself to devise my own standard. I have set the value of one ohm as the threshold by which an instrument will either pass or fail. If I measure one or more ohms of resistance between the ground lug of the power plug and the ground point of the lighting instrument, the instrument is out of service until it is repaired. The ground point will always be a single point outside the instrument. You might be somewhat surprised at one ohm being chosen as being so high a value. Zero ohms should be the norm, the ideal. Believe me when I say that you will find maintaining that value a challenge. Expansion, contraction, corrosion, breaks in multi strand wire, all add up to increase the measured resistance over time. When you are responsible for a lot of lighting instruments, some form of compromise is called for otherwise a lot of lights will not be available.

Now here is a problem that I just can not get a grip on. Just about every lighting instrument will exhibit raised resistance the further one measures from the point the instrument is grounded. I have decided to use 3 ohms as the extreme outside measurement I will allow while taking measurements at various exposed bare metal points. I am hoping that this reading will trip a circuit breaker. I feel a bit uncomfortable using anything over 1 ohm but I just have to get real because the grounding points away from the main point is compromised by a number of factors.

Detection

Your volt ohm meter is the best tool for the detection of a ground fault. Here is a step by step method of determining if an instrument is at fault or not.

  1. Completely remove the lighting instrument from any power source.
  2. Do a complete visual inspection of the light for any and all problems.
  3. Use a volt ohm meter and select the ohms function.
  4. Choose the lowest ohm scale reading. We are going to want to measure down to one ohm or less and we want to see fractions of one ohm. I love the digital meters. Only use a meter that will give you at least three digit readout (X.XX).
  5. Short out the meter leads and write down the reading. I doubt very much if you read 0.00 ohms. You should read at least 0.01 ohms which shows you the resistance of your meter cables. You will be deducting that reading from any measurements you make on a lighting instrument, so write that number down. Also, in subsequent days, always measure the resistance of the meter leads before you measure a lighting instrument. The leads can change resistance over time showing you that you just might have to repair or replace the leads.
  6. Connect one lead of the ohm meter, it does not make any difference which lead, to the ground lug of the instrument power cable. I would hope you know which lug that is.
  7. Connect the second lead to the ground point of the light. Now this is where it gets interesting and somewhat time consuming. Where is the optimum ground point? Well I have had to take apart just about every light to find the connection point. If you measure less than one ohm at just about any outside point of the light than you are pretty sure the ground is OK. Keep in mind that most manufacturers will ground at a point not too distant from where the power cord enters the light so look for every screw, and pop rivet in that vicinity for good continuity. If you measure less than one ohm you are OK.
  8. If you measure one ohm or more you should take the instrument to the manufacturer or a repair shop that can make the necessary repair. If you know what you are doing, take the instrument apart and find the problem and make the repair.
  9. A totally separate test, but an important one, is to test for power line leakage to ground. Select high resistance setting on your meter and then measure from the ground lug on the power cord to each of the other two power connector pins. You will read NO resistance or infinity in every case. If you do not, if you read any resistance value, than you now have a serious or impending serious electrical short. Do not use that instruments until it is repaired. What you have just done is to measure the resistance between the power line used to fire the bulb and ground. A proper designed instrument will never allow any possible electron flow from a power connector and ground.

Repairs

Repairs should only be made by the manufacturer or a qualified technician that fully understands the theory and practice of electricity and electrical repair. If you have any reservations at opening one of these lights then don’t. Leave the job to a qualified technician.

For the repair technician, here are some things that I have found to look out for that should help in your repair.

  • In just about every case, disassembly of the instrument is required.
  • Once you are inside the light, locate the ground wire to see how it is attached to the instrument.
  • If you do not see clean bare metal under the ground point, then assume that it was painted during manufacture and the painted surface is the reason for the ground fault.
  • You probably will have to remove the ground point for inspection. Remove the screw or drill out the pop rivet.
  • If the metal around the ground point hole is painted, sand, do not file or grind the surface. Grinding and filing will make depressions that will interfere with smooth metal to metal surface contact when you reattach the ground point.
  • When making the ground point connection think of clean metal to metal contact on BOTH sides of the metal surface when using nuts/bolts and pop rivets.
  • Do not use any connector that can slip out of place. For this reason, do not use open U shaped spade connectors. Use O shaped!
  • When attaching the ground point connection, take special care to fasten with enough force/torque to ensure future integrity.
  • The word lock washer and star washer are distinctly different during this treatment. Do not use lock washers to gain a good ground. DefinitelyDO use star washers that will penetrate existing paint at numerous points. The uglier the star looks to you and feels to the touch, the better. The star washer should have deep tits that can cut through the paint making good electrical contact with the metal surface underneath.
  • After attaching the ground point and before putting the instrument together, take a continuity meter reading again until the instrument shows a good reading. Then take measurements away from the ground point to see how bad things get. Make a decision whether further paint removal, star washers, and grounding straps are advisable for other parts of the light. Plan carefully any ground strap that comes close to the light socket. Remember that most spots can “focus” and straps must stay out of the way of the light socket movement. Use all of your common sense when doing any redesign of any lighting instrument.You might want to consult with the manufacturer.
State of California takes assets from Sovereign.

State of California takes assets from Sovereign.

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In a LA Times article, Monday July 9, 2007, section A, page 1, revealed how the State of California seized assets that it deemed “unclaimed” from the people residing in and under the protection of the government.  A government exists to do the work of the Sovereign, the people of the state.  So then, how can a government work to diminish the assets of any individual?  The story revealed that the government was acting in ITS best interests against the interests of the Sovereign Power.  It should be self evident that such action should be deemed illegal.  The Sovereign should put out anyone who participated in these acts.

New telescope.

New telescope.

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My son and I were walking through the Brea Mall and I spotted the Discovery Store had a sale. We entered and found out that the store was closing down in a few months. The company was retreating to Internet sales only. By August the stores expected to close their doors. Immediately, I took a look at the Meade telescopes. I had always wanted a good telescope but could not afford one. They were marked down 30%. I jotted down the model numbers and prices. When I got home I went on the Internet. I found three telescopes that I wanted. My family talked me out of the $1,400 one, a Meade LX90 LNT. I looked at the ETX-125 PE and it was my next choice. I went to the store again and it was sold. I wrote an e-mail to one of the Orange County (California) Astronomers guru’s to ask for some advice and here is part of his reply:

“Big question on what telescope to buy…..
As a general rule one should not buy a telescope without knowing a lot about it., especially if you are interested in photography. The Orange County Astronomy has a beginner’s class to deal with these types of questions, unfortunately we have just completed the sessions regarding telescopes and that doesn’t help you if you must decide in the next few days…. first decision is whether you want to do photography and then what type of photography (in other words what kind of camera you will be using?)
If you want to do top quality photography with a CCD specialized camera, then you should probably go with a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope
of no less than 8 inch aperture with a very stable mount…..cost $1800-$2000 and above without camera, or eyepieces. If you just want to take a picture using your digital camera or web camera then about any telescope with a motor drive can be used to take a picture of moon & planets. If you don’t want to take pictures then the Dobsonian type telescopes offer larger aperture for less money. Once this decision is made than you want to purchase the largest aperture telescope you can afford, store, lift and transport.

I wouldn’t purchase your first scope to take pictures (8inch or larger scope)……I would recommend spending a lot less money to get a 3-5 inch aperture Go-to-scope first…..if you stay interested then upgrade to a telescope to do good quality photography at a later time.

The Meade ETX -90 would be a good first choice…….the ETX-70 is a little small unless you plan on backpacking with it and want a lighter scope or the ETX-90 is more money than you wanted to spend. I would not recommend anything less than a 70 mm aperture (ETX-70).”

Good advice. I went back to the Brea store and purchased the ETX-90PE for $527.22. I was later to discover that this purchase gave me credit to help pay for some lenses in a few days.

 

 

Updated Tags: May 18, 2019
University with junk yard “art”, broken “statue” and sunken boat.

University with junk yard “art”, broken “statue” and sunken boat.

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Here is a profile of a state university where, allegedly, enrollment is preeminent.

Overall, this university, allegedly, has a suspiciously low staff to customer ratio but this apparently does not show itself to the customer. This is remarkable as there is, allegedly no upward communication mechanisms existing on this campus except through the approved management tree. Here are some examples of missing communication opportunities:

  • No exit interviews when exiting this institution.
  • No ombudsman to hear complaints and resolve conflicts.
  • No staff council to hear staff input.
  • The staff and faculty union is allegedly not consulted on any issues.

No other mechanisms exist to hear what is going on at the front lines. Allegedly this is your typical medieval management system campus.

Another negative factor is this; allegedly the administration holds self-promotion as being important, sometimes at the expense of properly serving its customers.

Example: Their TV channel, on the local cable company, allegedly only offers self-glorifying pump pieces. The campus appears to not be a part of the community, if one watches their TV channel.

Example: TV equipment package that was configured by staff to produce sport and community remotes for local high schools, middle schools and community groups but was allegedly anchored in place, on campus, to thwart connection to the community.

Example: The Department of Radio-TV-Film, an academic department, was removed from a fully functional facility and folded into the president’s TV production facilities to allegedly create an illusion of an expanded complex. The sum is not greater than the parts but less.

Could it be that huge enrollment might be sited as an excuse for any discovered and reported transgressions?