AstroTrac and Canon

Well, Richard Taylor of AstroTrac got my polar alignment scope back to me before we left on vacation. Alas, the new scope has the same image scale problem as the old which makes it a bit difficult to align. Not impossible by any means, just more difficult. So I packed everything up and carried it with us to Missouri.

We had the chance to spend a night near Sullivan, MO, under some very nice dark skies. While Sullivan itself put a small light dome on the northwest horizon from my sister’s cabin, the south was quite dark, so much so that a cloud drifting across the Milky Way produced a dark blotch on the star field without any relected light at all. So I set up the AstroTrac and switched to my Borg 45ED to shoot the Rho Ophiuchus region since the conditions we okay (not great with moderate humidity and some clouds). But it was not to be. The previous day (July 4) I had had trouble with my modified TC80-N3 cable release. The TC80-N3 was modified by Hutech some 3 years ago (or was it 4?) when I bought the Canon 350D and Borg 45ED from them. I had thought it merely needed a replacement battery so I picked up on they way to the cabin. But it then stubbornly refused to work. Almost. As I messed with the cable, it fired for a 4-minute exposure when the cable was bent just a certain way. Hmm, the cable had been frayed near the strain relief, but worked fine the last time I was out (over a month earlier) and besides, last year I had coated that part of the cable with "Plasticoat" when I first noticed signs of fraying which I had though should have protected it and prevented futher problems. Still, keeping it bent at a funny angle to get in my shots wouldn’t be too bad. Sigh. No such luck. It simply refused to work a second time. After about half an hour of trying, I packed it in.

A couple of days later, I had the time and tools to attempt a repair by chopping a few inches off the cable and resoldering the leads. But no luck there either. The timer display looks and operates just fine, but the signals are not getting through. No idea why. Not even the "manual" pushbutton release works. So this trip is a bust since shooting 30-second exposures (the longest possible without the cable release) would be at best painful and at worst futile since I would have to push the button by hand (well, I could use the 3-second timer).

I’ve ordered a couple of TC80-N3 clones from Hong Kong that already have the correct cable attached for the 350D. Hopefully, they will arrive in time for our next trip in at the end of July. If not, I will at least be able to control the cameras via the computer serial port adapter, but I was hoping to be computer-free except for focusing. Oh well….