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Old 01-09-2018, 07:26 AM
Billyboy78 (Bill)
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Billyboy78 is offline
 
Join Date: May 2018
Location: CRESTMEAD Brisbane
Posts: 103
Nice looking scope Daniel. You've done well.

I've made a number of scopes over the years, or I should say mountings, and none of them have been a Dobsonian. I hired a club Dob once and I hated it in that I couldn't find anything and it was so easy to lose what I had found. This type of scope was conceived as a alt/az, (meaning altitude/azimuth that is designed to only work up/down and sideways) and to try and get it to track is going against its design. Tracking involves getting one axis to remain parallel to the earths axis, in your case angled up at 38 degrees and rotated at 1 revolution per day to keep the object centred. There are quite a number of specialist mountings that are designed to track and do it well. You can keep your beautiful tube, just reattach it to a different mounting. A classic arrangement is called a German Equatorial Mount (GEM). They can be made out of wood, metal pipe or whatever you have on hand. Do your research, particularly the cloudy nights forum where there are lots of pictures of cheap mounts.

I've had no experience at motorising a dob so I can't help you there.
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