"While Gary’s mod works great and represents 90% of what I did, here are the couple changes I made":

1) external self powered cooling fan with internal ducting of the project box to direct air flow and hopefully maximize cooling. I chose this over an exhaust fan setup as only parts of the board seem to get hot. This directed airflow required me to “weld/silicone” the front end of the ccd lens housing to the project box to prevent currents crossing the chip’s viewing field. Minimal vibration from the fan remains to be dealt with but it is definitely pushing air across the “hotspots”.

2) On a note of precaution, my ccd’s lens housing was not fixed to the board, just inserted in the four holes with a snug fit. Attempting to unscrew the lens removed the housing on me, but fortunately it did not break any mounting posts. I dipped the four posts in a super glue tube, removed excess with an exacto and refitted securely. **Others should be cautious of this because the ultra-thin posts could have easily broken and I would have been up a creek trying to get it re-seated correctly. I suggest gently wiggling the housing to see if it removes easily and then unscrewing the lens. Have a clean bag immediately available to protect the chip once the housing is off.** As this happened to me unexpectedly, I was unprepared and spent another 30 minutes carefully cleaning the chip to my satisfaction with treated q-tips.

3) My radio shack was out of the 10mm insulated standoffs so I settled for 5mm’s. The smaller size allowed me to use the standoff in the traditional manner by mounting the board to the project box via the original hole in the chip end of the board. As a result I did not have to deal with the foam supports Gary utilized. I did have to flatten/sand one side of the stand off to avoid interference with the lens housing but this was very simple. I also screw mounted the standoff to the project box faceplate but in retrospect would use super glue instead. The screw head is close to the hole for the chip and had to be painted black, but it does not interfere with and falls inside of the t-thread and 1.25 adapter in Gary’s instructions.

4) Instead of the t-thread recommendation I took the metal base with blackened interior of an old Meade MA eyepiece, created a crosshair on it, centered it over the chip and hot glued it to the box’s faceplate. It worked well, is pre-threaded for filters and offered a cheaper solution for me. Finding a t-thread to 1.25 adapter similar to the one Gary used proved challenging for me, and the one I did identify was not threaded for filters.