20141208_054744 GMT

[stewartw]

Hi Bill,

Not sure if your equipment was up and running at this time (no double entendre intended ) for this long slow one heading off to my north east.

Cheers

William

[BillW]

Hi,
Apart from a couple of hours on Friday evening I've had no clear skies for several days.
It has been miserable up here and it looks to get worse over the next few days.
I haven't even had the new 910 out of it's box yet!
cheers,
Bill.

[arp]

Hi,

Also caught that nice slow one on my Leeds_NW camera.

Cheers,

Alex.

[allanuk]

Dec 8, 2014 9:34:00 GMT BillW said:

Hi,
 
I haven't even had the new 910 out of it's box yet!
cheers,
Bill.

Wow not even to look at!!  You must be made of stern stuff Bill. Go on open it, you know you want to.

[BillW]

Yep, it's sitting there in it's bubble wrap bag....
I was hoping it would get it's baptism this weekend with the Geminid peak but it's looking grim...
I might just have to have a peak at the weekend....

[allanuk]

Weather looking grim all over the country for the next week. Looks like you'll get it worst up North. Batten down the hatches, its gonna blow.

[allanuk]

Bill, according to the weather predicting site I use, you should have clear skies for a few hours from late evening Friday to early hours on Saturday morning. A good time to test the 910 perhaps.

[BillW]

Indeed!, I've been watching the forecasts closely and they have been improving for the Friday night all the time.
The 910 might get it's first outing after all!

[arp]

Hi Bill,

The Watec 910HX/RC has an Achilles Heel - a small and delicate 6-pin connector.

To avoid accidentally pulling out the wires most owners secure the hand controller cable (see pics). The cable can also be looped (not tightly) around the top of the camera then held in place with a small threaded bolt / screw.

Cheers,

Alex.

[allanuk]

That's a useful tip if you keep the handset close to the camera. Unfortunately the handset cable is only 1mtr long. Fine if your cam is accessible and close, but not much use if the cam is on the roof.
I extended my hand controller cable by cutting the cable 6" from the cam and then adding an RJ45 plug on each end of the cable being careful to keep the wires in the same order on each connector. Then I used 2 RJ45 straight through extension sockets and a 15mtr cat 5 cable to bring the handset down into my dining room observatory/control room. The handset only uses 6 wires, so if you pluck out the 2 spare wires on the cat5 cable from the RJ45, they can be used to carry the signal as well, so you only need one cable to the cam for video and control. Doing this mod means I never have to disconnect the 6 pin connector from the cam.
I'll post some pics when I modify my next cam when it arrives.

[BillW]

Hi,

Well, the sky has cleared and it's first blood to the 910! I've read about noise issues and mines seems to have the "dancing horizontal bars". As it's only been on for 10 minutes I'll reserve judgement.

Alex, yes I noticed this when I took it out of the box. It was a bit smaller than I thought. My old 120n seems positively chunky by comparison. I have however taped the controller lead, coax and power leads together to give some support.

Ooo second Geminid as I type, omg and another! I can't see my spectral systems from this pc but I hope they do as well as this!!!

Cheers,
Bill.

[allanuk]

Dancing bars will be signal interference Bill. I try to keep the power lead away from the video lead as much as possible, and prefer twisted pair data cable with video baluns as opposed to using normal coax. If you are getting lots of captures with nothing but speckle (like cosmic rays)set min(frm) to 3. That should stop it.