Optical Tune-Up And Astrophotography Prep - Meade ETX-70AT Repair Manual

tightening and loosening the bolt at the top. I suggest running the bolt up snug with the bottom
access cover off. Use the lever as a wrench to adjust bolt until it locks the base when to the left and
locks to the right. You will find the sweet spot after just a little playing with it.
NOTE: It is not necessary to remove the clutch assembly to tighten it. Just follow the last 4 lines
of the above paragraph.
39) Plug in your Autostar and give the scope a give your scope a new slew test drive. I found mine
moved much smother than the unmodified new 70AT I tested against.

Optical Tune-up and Astrophotography Prep:

I plan to use this as a "Fast Wide-
field" digital lens. I will probably shoot mostly
in IR, but that will come later. For now, I need
to reduce the internal reflections and get the
this cut down a lot of bouncing light. Next I used Testors Flat Black model paint to paint the edge of all the
baffles and any reflections inside the flip mirror chamber. Finally, I used the black paint to carefully edge
the lens. The result: A noticeably higher performing scope when it comes to internal contrast. You can
really see it using a light source in a dark room when comparing two scopes side by side. Also, after taking
a picture of the parts with the flash, I was able to see areas of less sanding and toughed it up. It looked
almost uniform to the naked eye but the flash really caught the plastics natural reflective nature. Below is a
photo-essay on what I did to my scope.
mount stable and ready for use. For now, I will
outline what I have done and why. This is based on
my latest readings of forums, magazines and
journals. I don't claim to be an optical engineer, I
am just using logic and coping what the higher end
scopes are doing.
The two things that make the biggest
difference in the scope is A) Sanding/matting the
surfaces and B) Blacking out the lens edges. I
started by sanding every surface inside the scope
that saw light. Everything is shiny black plastic, so