Glad to hear the weather cooperated some for the Friday night
session. You have wildfire/smoke/haze problems there too? We have had
a couple of really bad days since arriving due to the BIG fire in SE
GA and a fairly big one in NE FL. Parts of I-75 and I-10 were closed
yesterday.

The club scope is a 13-inch (13 1/4) Coulter Dob, around f/4.5. Chuck
Groth (tall contractor) bought it new when Coulters were quite a
bargain. A guy from Fountain City who was a U MN student at the time
bought it from Chuck when Chuck got divorced and put his time and
money into hot cars. The other guy sold it to the club for $250 to
get a portable refractor. We asked for donations above the dues at
the time to pay for it. I don't recall who those who donated were.
Chuck bought a nice Tuthill mylar solar filter (blue image) that he
built a sturdy frame for. That filter should be in 218 Cowley. The
2nd guy put a 2-inch focuser on it and a Telrad. It was a "cheap"
plastic one, but worked pretty well. The club eventually put a Novak
2-inch focuser on. The scope was originally blue and very heavy. Mike
Bagneski helped shave some weight off of the rocker box. A few years
ago, Gordon did a major modification/redesign to the mount and tube.
The University's 24 mm 2-inch Nagler usually gave excellent views
through it. M13 near the zenith was a killer sight. Frank Roldan used
to help keep it collimated before the University got a nice laser
focuser. The club added a nice Celestron optical finder. The
University bought a Dob Driver II for it and we used it for awhile.
But, if the mount lost "contact" with the gears, you had to "reboot"
things. I wanted a Poncet platform for it, and probably should have
gone that way. Bruce Klubertanz used to have a nice homebuilt one on
his 10-inch Coulter. If anybody else recalls any other details,
please post them here.