Post by photoracer on Mar 7, 2017 17:26:54 GMT -5
I recently came into possession of a 60's era Cave 12" Convertible Cass/Newt that my friend and former employer Gary Hand rescued from a dilapidated observatory before it collapsed in Virginia. I have previously had a Cave 10" F7 on loan from a local community college for about 2 years while I repaired a few issues with it and took it to a few of their observing outing until they wanted it back after I finished work on it. Anyway this 12" has the original HD mount with the steel box section welded pier and the old mount with the 1.5" RA axis and the 2" DEC axis. The main drive is a weird contraption with extra motors and gears added to the original Cave setup which I don't think is original (no longer fits in the Cave drive case). The drive control hand-paddle is not like any Cave I have ever seen. The OTA has what I call a custom heater assembly for the primary mirror using thermal resistors. A big hole was cut in the location of the Newt focus for a sliding plate carrying the original Sky Micro Giant focuser to change back-focus from what I can see, maybe for imaging. The primary mirror is not original and is an Optical Craftsman mirror personally signed by Dick Brandt during the period he was the primary optical engineer at OC. The pair of secondary mirror look original but not sure. It appears the scope is an F5/F20 not an F4/F16 as the primary has a 60.15" FL. I think it spent all of its time in the Newtonian setup as the secondary is rusted in place on the spider. Personally I'd like to restore it to use the Classical Cassegrain focus but I would need to optics checked to see what kind of figure it has and whether it needs work. I know the Classical Cassegrains from Cave did not appear to be well regarded likely from the difficulty in grinding the correct hyperbolic curve on the secondary compared to the easier to make Dall-Kirkham.