Al's trying to collimate

Al sent me an email. Said he was having trouble collimating his C8 despite installing Bob's Knobs. He described the view of Jupiter, its moons, the stars and it sounded terrible. He also said he followed the procedure but "any time I try to focus the star leaps all over the place." That seemed very odd. He went on to say the "rings look concentric and nothing happens." Boy, I'm having a really hard time following...

I said that I've collimated many 'scopes. Outdoors and in. Reminded him that he needed good conditions when using a real star. I specifically told him that I had not installed and used the knobs. I wondered if he might come out to an observing session and we could fix him up there.

I also suggested he put the message to the Yahoo!Group. Intimated it really couldn't be done by email or over the phone. Should be able to find someone experienced with this in his neighbourhood. He said he'd have to review the instructions on how to post. Huh.

I sent him a web link to a good set of collimation instructions but he said he had already seen it. "When I touch the focus the whole image jumps around." What?! It sounded to me like the mount was shaking. Maybe the collimation fine but there are problems with the mount. Or possibly the knobs were not installed correctly.

He said he was going to ask Dietmar...

He asked if there was still going to be a meeting on the 11th. Um. Yes.

Poor guy's getting really frustrated. And hammered with many things at the same time... All with the end goal of imaging, possibly the most complicated task to do with a telescope.