I want to say the grant was 120k, we may have added some funds from the school's coffers and this was a decade and change back, but it was for the whole building, dome, scope, computers, and I think they even had to run power buried to it, which I'm sure cost at least a few grand. Neverthless I'm sure the scope was a good 10k minimum, probably more.



I'd agree, too many upgrades in between and you're basically just tossing money away, even if you get a good price on resale. The nice thing about the first scope you buy (as opposed to marginally functional ones most of us got as kids) is you can regift it to a kid or nice/nephew etc, but after that any higher end scope is just gonna gather dust once you upgrade, might as well try to get a decent price on ebay. Personally I doubt I'd ever go beyond a 8", the CGEM 800 looks pretty good and I could see myself buying it or something like it in the future, but anything beyond that, I can't see myself stargazing often enough to justify that even if I was rolling in cash, too much existential guilt. Ironically I'd be more likely to go further up with a dob because then I could justify it as 'an educational expense' if I had kids. "Come children, let's go work on daddy's light bucket". I probably should buy a new scope, I like the look of the Nexstar line but something in me rebels about having computer controls on a personal scope, presumably the same one that prefer paperbacks to ebooks and shudders at the idea of getting an electric tea kettle, need to be ale to fiddle with the knobs or the fun's gone.



I always encourage people to use ebay but for these sort of reasons I almost never buy things used off the net, even books, and it's pretty hard for someone to destroy one of those to the point it can't be resold and properly used, short of maybe dropping it in the bathtub.



I guess brass was ideal prior to aluminum, presumably it gives stuff an antique feel. Wood probably is okay as the tripod, but I'd think fiberglass would be better.




It seems safe to do it, emphasis 'seems', I'm looking over a pdf on building them right now (link below) and it doesn't seem like too hard a project. Definetly two-person I think, at least for a lot of it. Except for the optics nothing in it is pricy enough that a mistake ruins the project. There's really no minimum size for one, so I suppose a proto-type would be advisable before shooting for a full blown juggernaut.



I'm typing on a desktop right now, haven't bought a laptop in years, but I've owned two and I was doing a lot of traveling at the time so it was worth it. Now, not really expecting to travel much, so I'd agree.



Ah, wordstar, I still remember when WYSIWYG was new and cool and a megabyte was a lot of data. Somewhere around here I have dot matrix printer and a 286, probably still work. This is why I despise computers and cell phones, they change too fast, I know all sorts of tricks for software that no longer exists, that bugs me.



Haven't worked with either enough or recently enough to be able to say, but both are reliable companies. I don't like bushnell though, a rifle scope bias, I tend to think of Leupold as making superior scopes than Bushnell.