From: grant@DELVALLE.LLNL.GOV (Chuck Grant)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: 13.1 Coulter Odessey experiences
Date: 13 Aug 92 13:55:52 GMT

ja@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu writes:

>Wow, it really sounds like you've had fun modifying that telescope.  I have one
>question though, why didn't you build it from scratch?  You could have saved
>hundreds of dollars since you've replaced almost all the components anyway.

Oh good, another chance to ramble on... (any excuse to not work on my thesis)

Spending the minimum amount of money possible was not my goal.
I guess, having the most fun along the way was my goal.

I wanted to have a working telescope, RIGHT AWAY, to use to keep
up my enthusiasm. This was the cheapest way to do that. It had
been fifteen years since I had owned a telescope (and a tiny,
crummy one that that). I wasn't real sure that it was going to be
all that much fun, going out into the night and getting cold and
all. I guess I felt better risking money to see if I liked the
hobby, rather than risking a big investment in time. I could
always sell my telescope and get part of my money back. Can't do
that with time.

In a way I viewed the Coulter as a mirror in a big red and black
disposable box that just happened to function as a temporary
telescope. The whole telescope cost about the same as buying a
mirror from some other company. Once I got it, I was actually
really surprised and how well the Coulter worked as a system, how
well all the design tradeoffs worked to make a real usable, cheap
telescope.  It is not a great telescope by most standards, but it
is way better than I thought it would be, and I think it is a
really great as a store-bought, out-of-the-box easy-to-use (with
a Telrad) get-you-going-right-away telescope at the lowest
possible cost.

If I had tried to build the whole thing myself to start with, I
may not have stayed fired up long enough to finish. I would have
been wondering, gee why am I doing this? Is this thing really
going to work? Is this really going to fun? Why don't I pick some
other hobby? ..., etc. And I would have spent a long long time in
the design phase trying to get everything perfect before I even
started.

Plus there is the fact that I learned a lot about what features I
like and don't like in a telescope by putting in many hours at
the eyepiece. It would have hurt my ego to go to all the initial
effort to build one from scratch and then find out I did a bunch
of things "wrong," and had to change them. Whereas making a bunch
of modifications to something that I didn't design and build
myself was much less threatening to my perfectionist nature.

The first night I brought the scope home I took it out to our
club's dark site and I knew that I had made the right choice (for
me.) That first night was so much fun it was worth the whole
price of the telescope. The first time I let a bunch of kids look
through it at a star party was worth the whole price of the
telescope too. Having a telescope while building a telescope is
worth it (for me).

So if my telescope suddenly disappeared and I had to start over,
I think I would do the same thing again. I would want to have a
telescope to use and tinker with while I fiddled around with "the
ultimate design."

Chuck