Those of you who get the newsletter may remember the following article from Rich W:

"About mid January the club received four refractor telescope kits as a gift.

I call these kits as they consist of a tube assembly with lens and a separate uninstalled focuser. Also the lenses need edge collimation screws installed so that the two elements can be centered correctly with one another. The scope tube assemblies are Burgess Optical 65 ED Backpacker scopes which were sold off quite inexpensively due to lens cell design problems which do not keep the elements properly centered. This can be corrected via the mentioned lens edge collimation screws for each lens element.

The gift came about due to a member of the Yahoo Refractors group contacting me and asking if I had any use for the scopes. I was contacted due to being the group owner of the group which has close to 1800 members. I replied that I would check with the club I belonged to and see if they would be interested in such a donation. After talking with Andy Dierenga and Tim Burns I accepted on the part of the club. After receipt of the scopes I sent the donor the club donation form which includes our IRS tax exempt status information so he could list them as a donation.

To turn the donations into working scopes the focusers need to be installed and the collimation screws added. Then the lenses need to be collimated via adjustment while observing a star at relatively high power. Any members interested in being involved with this please let me know. The donated scopes each included a 20mm eyepiece and a carrying sack. Once they are assembled and adjusted it is up to the club to determine what they will be used for. They are 65mm F6 ED scopes with 2" focusers. They do not include diagonals at this time."

We will be undertaking this project this Saturday over at Rich W's house (specific time still TBD). If anyone is interested in helping out, let us know. Maybe we could have someone take pictures and we can document the project on this thread.

Jeff and I will be heading over to Rich's this Saturday at noon in case anyone else would like to join us for this project.