The third scope to go in at Deep Sky West—contemporaneously with the FSQ106—was a Planewave CDK12.5 in March 2024. I had ordered it in December 2022 and it finally arrived in August 2023. Lead time on gear like this is insane. But even then, it was still waiting on a camera and a mount.

The camera, a Moravian C5a-100M (the same model I was using on the TOA130), arrived in October 2023. I didn't have the mount for this scope yet, and I was having trouble with the C5 on the TOA spontaneously disconnecting because of humidity, so I decided to head out to Santa Fe that October and swap out the faulty C5 for the new one. It was time to get the TOA mounted on its pier, so my trip—the first of five trips to deal with this camera—had a dual purpose. Moravian had blamed the power supply and had sent me a 150W brick to replace the 120W power supply that came with the camera. So I brought that camera home and tested it there over the next few months.

The camera still had disconnection issues. Moravian sent a replacement compute board and power supply board along with instructions on how to replace them inside the camera. After I did this, the issue seemed resolved.

Intending to use the C5 on the CDK12 was a risk. The stated image circle on the CDK12 is 52mm while the diagonal of the C5's medium-format sensor is 54mm. I have since found that it works adequately, but sometimes I see reflections and artifacts in the corner and along the short edge when shooting broadband. I haven't noticed that shooting narrowband. This doesn't always happen, so it makes me wonder whether it's a consequence of shooting outside the stated image circle or it's a defect in my particular CDK12. Planewave has no answers. It doesn't happen at all in narrowband. It's not a huge issue. I just plan my framing around it. The mount, another 10Micron GM2000, arrived in December 2023. But there was still much to do. I had also ordered the 0.66X reducer from Planewave. That would take the focal length from 2541mm down to 1677mm. That would offer me a wider field—or so I thought. Rouz Astro makes a quick conversion kit where you can swap the reducer in and out in just a few minutes, so I could choose to shoot at either focal length when I wanted. I would just need an observatory tech to do the dirty work.

But the Rouz kit requires an off-axis guider (OAG) that can be refocused on demand. Optec makes a Sagitta OAG with an optional focus motor and software that satisfies that need. The other requirement of using the Rouz kit was to employ an Optec Gemini focuser-rotator. I love all my Moonlite Nitecrawlers, but this time, Moonlite was not an option.

All this came crashing down when I read a thread on the Cloudy Nights forum about the 0.66X reducer. It pointed out that the 0.66X reducer not only reduces the focal length by 34%, it also reduces the image circle by 34%, which would take it from 52mm to 34mm. This is not the behavior I had experienced with any other scope I had. I contacted Planewave about it and they confirmed this. That rendered the reducer and the Rouz kit useless. There would be no point in employing the reducer without the commensurate increase in the size of the field.

Meanwhile, I was waiting on Pegasus Astro to start shipping the new version of the Ultimate Powerbox, which I needed for the additional connections the CDK12 required. I might have gotten the Pegasus Astro ltimate Powerbox v2 to work, but they were out of stock everywhere and were no longer being made, pending the release of the new Pegasus Astro Ultimate Powerbox v3. They were supposed to start shipping in July 2023, but I wasn't able to get my hands on one until early March 2024. I had planned my installation trip to Santa Fe for mid March, so this left me very little time to bench test, field test, and get ready to go.

By early March 2023, I had everything ready to go including the PrimaLuce Labs Alto-Giotto cover/flat panel, 50mm Chroma square filters, ZWO ASI174MM-Mini guide camera, Digital Loggers Web Pro remote-controllable power strip, MGPBox to transmit environmental data to the mount, TPLink switch to distribute connectivity to the various components that needed it, Nest outdoor camera for monitoring operations, special-order adapter from the focuser to the Sagitta from PreciseParts, custom USB cables from USBFireWire, 14U half-rack enclosure with appropriate shleving and storage, and an Intel NUC control computer.

I hurriedly field tested everything outside on a quick image of M72 for a couple of nights, and it went fine. So I loaded up the truck with the CDK12 and the FSQ106 and all the accessories and headed to Santa Fe. I had arranged for two nights at the Bobcat Inn, a very nice and cozy bed-and-breakfast place about 25 minutes from the observatory. About two-thirds of the way there, I realized I had forgotten to pack the Giotto flat panel for the CDK. I called Christi and home and she was able to get it to FedEx for overnight delivery to the Bobcat with five minutes to spare.

Peter Lipscomb, the wonderful observatory tech, met me at the observatory the next morning. Installation of both scopes went fine and I was able to easily get both polar aligned that night. But during the night, the C5 spontaneously disconnected again—even with the new power supply and the new internal compute and power boards I had installed. I was able to get the camera going again by power cycling it.

The next day, I went to the observatory again and replaced the USB and power cables to the camera, but the problem occurred again that night. I couldn't stay in Santa Fe any longer, so I emailed off yet another plea to Moravian and headed home.

I struggled with it for the next few weeks, power cycling it when it would disconnect and re-cooling it each time (a minimum 30-minute operation). Moravian finally told me I needed to send the camera back to the Czech Republic for repair.

As (bad) luck would have it, I was also having issues with the Planewave Delta-T dew heater that came with the CDK. It would no longer connect either. I contacted Planewave and told them I was about to head back to the observatory, so they agreed to send me a new Delta-T provided I would ship the faulty one back to them. I had read on the Astrobin forum about other Delta-T failures, and some people there blamed it on powering it with the Pegasus Ultimate Powerbox. I discounted this, but I still took the power brick and power cord that came with the Delta-T with me. That would require that I put the Delta-T on a separate power circuit and run yet another cord out of the enclosure through the wiring harness all the way up to the top of the scope. I hated that, but I did it anyway.

So in Early May 2024, with new Delta-T in hand, I flew back out to Santa Fe for C5-related trip number three. After installing the new Delta-T and briefly testing it, I removed the C5, took the rig out of service, and drove over to FedEx in Santa Fe to ship it off to the Czech Republic. We had planned an RV trip to Santa Fe in late May/early June, so I begged Moravian to have it back to me by then. Over the course of the next few weeks, I would fire up the rig and test the Delta-T. In about mid May, it failed again. Sheesh! I contacted Planewave and they refused to send me another one that I could take out there in late May. They insisted that I send that one back to them.

Late May arrived and we headed out on our RV trip. I had asked Moravian to send the repaired C5 to Peter in Santa Fe so I could install it while I was there. While we were in Santa Fe, Moravian informed me that they had to ship it to my home address because if they shipped it to a different location than that of the original buyer, the EU would impose a 25% VAT. The C5 arrived at my house three days after we returned from our trip. The only thing I was able to accomplish on the trip was removing the second faulty Delta-T to send off to Planewave. So camera trip number four was a bust.

Planewave worked on my Delta-T but decided it was a lost cause, so they shipped me a new one. At least they did it quickly. So with the third Delta-T and the repaired C5 in hand, I boarded another flight to the Bobcat Inn. By this time, Deep Sky West had brought Thomas Gaffney on as a full-time tech. Thomas is awesome and does an amazing job with this stuff. His first day on the job was the night I arrived in Santa Fe on this trip.

The next morning, I drove out to the observatory on an unseasonably hot 100-degree June day. I found Thomas there scrambling to cover all the telescopes in the Alpha observatory (there are two buildings—Alpha and Beta) with tarps. During the night, the drive chain that opens and closes the roof had derailed, which left the roof open in the summer heat. Between the two of us, we were able to rethread the drive chain and get the roof closed. But the Alpha observatory, where my FSQ lives, would be out of commission for two weeks. Fortunately both the TOA and CDK are in the Beta observatory, which continued to work fine.

After taking care of that, I turned my attention to installing the repaired C5 and new Delta-T on the CDK. That went fine. But when I turned everything on (for the first time in a couple of weeks), the mount would not power up. The light on the controller would come on briefly and then it would turn off. Ermagerd. It seemed like I would never get this CDK running. After a video call with Tolga, who did his best to help, we decided 10Micron controller box would either have to go to Deep Space Products in New Mexico for repair or off to Italy to the 10Micron factory. So after talking Thomas through all the wiring on it, I unhooked it, brought packed it in my things, and headed home feeling pretty frustrated. Tolga contacted 10Micron and they responded pretty quickly. They said it was likely an internal 315mA fuse and gave me instructions on how to open the box and replace it. First, I had to get replacement fuses. I tried several local auto-parts stores, but no one had it. But I was able to find it on Amazon for next-day delivery.

After I installed a new fuse, the controller came right up and stayed on. Whew! So I packed up the controller with a set of 10 spare fuses and sent it to Thomas over night. Thomas hooked everything up properly and turned it on. It died. Same behavior—the light would come on momentarily and then it would shut down. Over the next several hours, we went through 8 of the 10 spare fuses trying different things until we finally landed on the culprit: it was a bad RJ-9 1950s phone cable from the controller to the MGPBox. Once we replaced the fuse and left the MGPBox unplugged, it worked fine. It's not optimal to run the scope without the MGPBox, but it's not fatal. I've since replaced the cable and it all works now.

So finally, after many trials and tribulations, the CDK was finally up and running reliably. The C5 has run well, the mount has worked perfectly, the new MGPBox cable has caused no trouble, and the Delta-T is functioning (although I have since switch the dew heaters to the auto-dew ports on the Pegasus and only use the Delta-T to monitor mirror temperatures. There have been a few glitches along the way—a camera cable gone bad and a faulty Pegasus software update—but they have been relatively easy to solve. So I'm now coming up on a year with the CDK working well.

For processing images, I use AstroPixelProcessor (APP) to stack the images. I hate the interface. You can't even save your work from session to session. And if you ever long for 1994, just spend a few hours with APP. The vast majority of people in this avocation use PixInsight's Weighted Batch Preprocessing Script. It has a good interface, you can save your work, and you at least feel like you've made it slightly beyond Y2K. But I find that it just doesn't produce results that are as good as APP for me. The middle section of work belongs exclusively to PixInsight. If you ever want to travel deep down inside the object -oriented orifice of a purist programmer's punctilious wet dream of UI design, then PixInsight is for you. If you prefer intuitive experiences, stay away. Stay very far away. It's a bear to learn. More difficult than any 1970s command-line-driven mainframe batch process I ever used. But it gets better with time and experience. And the things it actually does are off-the-charts insanely good. For those keeping score at home, I use PixInsight from just after stacking until LRGB recombination (of a starless image).

The rest belongs to Photoshop. Its interactivity makes it my tool of choice for masking, color adjustment, contrast, saturation, recombination (e.g., stars, Ha, etc.), resampling, and saving final images.

I apologize for duplicating much of this story in the FSQ and TOA galleries, but many of the details are the same. My hope is that it might help someone who is considering installing a telescope remotely or already has a remote rig. Perhaps there are one or two ideas that might be of use. In any case, please take a look at the images below that I have taken with this setup.