Cube arrived - funny little beast - may prove lovable ;-)

Cube update - 2.6.08 -

In post below reviewing my first experience with the Cube I mistakenly said that it kept the date and time after being shut down. It does not, as I found out this morning. So in that respect it's like Celestron and Meade - but why remains a mystery to me since it does retain other information, such as latitude and longitude. I should add that in more dry runs I am conscious of the skimpy list of alignment stars it provides. Wish there were a few more. I almost always have trees and buildings that get in my way. Ah well...

Oh - and another fluke. I'm not sure why it wants to know if we're "ahead" or "behind" GMT? Seems like it would know that already from the longitude. In any event, when I first put in that we were behind it, it gave me star choices that made no sense. I started over and put in that we were ahead - which doesn't make sense to me - and it worked. The star choices were from our sky at that time. Good. Whatever it likes, I'm comfortable. But this morning, it was still giving me the star choices from last night. Wrong. So I put in that I was behind GMT - which is my first choice anyways - and now it gave me logical star choices for an alignment. That's a bit flakey. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume I zigged somewhere where I was supposed to zag, but. . .

----original post 2/5/08 ---

Well, the Cube arrived today and I think I'm gonna like it if I can work around some of its idiosyncrasies while maintaining my patience - it does have sort of an R2D2 air to it.

If you'll pardon a little background,I'm not exactly new to this scene. I attached digital setting circles to a 16-inch Meade Newtonian about 20 years ago. I now own "go to" scopes made by Meade, Celestron, and Orion, and I have an ArgoNavis system on my 15-inch Obsession. So I am approaching the Cube with both a sense of its competitors and a big allowance for not expecting much at this price, but wanting a nice, light weight, grab-and-go unit for use with a small refractor.

What I like so far - and mind you, it's cloudy, so I've only played indoors:

1. You can use it manually. That's hard to do on my LX90, impossible on my NexStar scopes, but something I love about the Obsession/ArgoNavis set up.

2. You can use it semi-manually. I've fooled around with various alt-az mounts that were smooth - but not as smooth as simply pushing the keys and letting the motors do the work ay various speeds. I can see ignoring the computer entirely during some quick sessions where I want simply to look at some familiar objects. Just turn the Cube on and use the motor speed button to get around the sky and follow objects once you have them.

3.You can enter RA/Dec directly - an undocumented feature, at least in the directions I have - but to me a major plus. It's especially useful with the meager databases in the Cube, but it's an approach I quite frequently use with other systems rather than trying to figure out where they have stored what I want.

4. The ability to easily mount the whole assembly on either one of my permanent piers with a single bolt in about two minutes. That's a real plus for me.

5. I did a two=star alignment and as near as I could tell - I was indoors, but I observe frequently - it pointed itself very close to where the two stars should be at this hour. It then "went to" half a dozen objects that I knew the general location of. . . so in a very general way it does seem to be functioning fine.

6. It seems to remember the time and other data even after I shut it off. For the life of me I can't figure out why the Meade and Celestron systems can't do this. I mean how much trouble is it to keep the correct time and date? I assume it does this on the 8AA batteries, but it certainly shouldn't take much juice.

What I don't like, but can live with -

1. The dinky tripod. OK, we're lucky to get any tripod at a cost of $242 and free shipping. And while dinky looking, it does seem sturdy enough for what I want and it is light - very light.

2. The inclusion of an AC adaptor, but not a 12-volt cord. I don't want to be constantly buying AA batteries and I do have AC in a couple locations where this will be used a lot, but I assume a lot of people - myself included - would be more likely to use a hefty battery pack with this rather than the AC or the AA batteries. Given my choice, I would have opted for a 12-volt cord.

3. The directions. Honestly, I'm familiar with these systems in general. I have to think for someone who purchases this as a first system, this could be a real challenge to get operating if you follow the included directions. I even got hung up for a while on where the heck the azimuth axis lock was. Certainly not obvious to me and not included in my directions. They're not as convoluted as the Meade directions I got a couple years ago, but they leave a lot to be desired.

4. A bit of unpredictable flakiness. Before I turned it off I decided to point the tube at the zenith since that was the posion it likes to start from. I did so with the arrow keys and when I took my fingers off the keys, the tube simple scrolled back to a 45-degree angle on its own. Rebellious little thing! So I did it again. It went back again. I gave up and turned it off. Don't have a clue what that was all about. Oh - and why are there two places to plug in the hand controller? Did they know in advance one wouldn't work? That was my situation. the first one I tried was too loose a fit. I'd get going and it would fall out, requiring me to start all over. Fortunately the second one fit snugly.

And did I mention the anemic databases? Event he S&T reviewer had to admit some of them were pretty useless. The Messier list will get alot of use. Besides that, I would have liked to have seen a good selection of double stars in some logical pattern since this is meant for small scopes and small scopes do well on bright double-stars.

Ah well. . . looking forward to giving this more of a work out. I plan to use an AT66 on it some times, but I think the main scope for it will be an Orion 80ED. I'll see which seems to work best and whether or not the 80ED is a little more cumbersome getting in and out of the house quickly. At my age I need every little edge in ease of use!