Chuck wrote:

I've avoided the Ealing mostly because of it's idiosyncrasies; you've found the way to tame it.

Reminds me of Bessel's "twice built telescope" maxim. Between the problems in my 10" GEM and the Ealing, seems to be that I have been karmically channeling Bessel over the last year.

From Karl Giberson's review of Hirschfield's _Parallax_:

"Bessel's observational prowess, which had a strong theoretical dimension, was legendary. He developed the concept of the "twice-built telescope." Bessel knew that any telescope, . . ., had flaws that would interfere with the kind of precision measurements . . . . So he figured out a way to build a 'mental' model of the telescope that would expose its various idiosyncrasies. Knowledge of the mental model allowed the user to make allowances for the limitations of the telescope." http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/ArticleDetail/tabid/68/id/5292/Default.asp... - Kurt