Not too much, yet.. A few things on the to-do list but haven't had much time yet..
I made the trolley (well, "made" is subjective on that one ) and the observing chair, and I put some little padded furniture sliders on the inside of the base where the bottom of the OTA has a habit of crashing into when you're pointing up near the zenith..
I did the milk bottle washers the other night, they haven't had a fisrt light yet though..
Oh and the eyepiece case too.. though it's not as if that was too much work on my part Cutting a bit of foam to suit
So that's about it for me, for now..
Starkler has done some great mods to a 10" GSO dob.. i'm sure he'll post them later.
Here is one I did a few years back .
I have a Minolta D7 and wanted to use it for imaging but found that the large lens on the D7 vigneted badly in eyepiece afocal imaging . Scopetronix had only the maxiview at the time which was a 11/4" so i knew that was not going to work as the lenses were to small .
I had this cheap Skywatcher 42mm 2" kelner eyepiece and it had a nice big eyelens on it , just about the same size as the Minolta lens .
I machined down the housing so the ep lens and the Minolta lens almost touched made up a bracket to hold the camera and hay presto .
Posted a few pics on a couple of US forums got some interest and guess what a few months later Scopetronixs came out with almost exactly the same set up in 2" and they even used the same eyepiece >>>>>>talk about coincidences?????? I notice a big patent pending logo on there web page .
Conspiracy theories any one ? :p
I have not made any mods yet, but one thing I want to mod is the mounting idea that meade had with the LX200. What were they thinking? Anyone with half a brain can see that trying to put a heavy scope onto of a steel thread is going to be hard.
No Aragorn ,it's a 6" f8 with a 70mm f13 guide scope on top.
I no longer have the 6" f8 it's been replaced by my newt still have the guide scope and mount.
I made a trolly as well for that rig using 6"soft tyred castors and leveling threads made getting the scope in and out of the garage all set up a lot easier .First set of 3" hard wheels use to sink in the grass so went for the 6" soft tyres --a lot better.
Here is another one from me .
It's a 400mm f6.3 Tokina telephoto with universal screw thread mount. I picked this up from Cash converters for $50.00 ---it's like new.
To this I made a an adapter from a pentax screw mount extension tube ---$2 from Cash converters . I toke this down to a local machine shop and they made a 11/4"sleave to fit inside the extension tube.----$25
This alows me to put eyepieces as well as my ToUcam in for wider view images.
I have included a couple of extracted frames from my ToUcam AVI files and this lens . One is at 400mm the other is with a 2 x teleconverter ---$2 from cash converters.
The lens was sitting ontop of a normal photo tripod . These were taken one night at a school astronomy night and the YOOOOO's and ARRRRR's from people seeing the moon realtime on a laptop was rewarding for the $79 spent on this one.
It also makes a great finder scope .
I also have a 135mm--$18 and 50mm $7.50 for even wider deep sky views . The Toucam is roughly equvalent to a 6-7mm eyepiece.
It's amazing some of the good quality camera lenses that cam be picked up cheap.
I did all this before steve moggs made his adapters available as I could not waite ---he had them in development at the time.
The Legs were really very simple to make. I cut a 2x4 into three equal lenghts with a Mitre saw (chop saw) set at a 22.5 degree angle. Each piece is The shape should be a parallelogram. Each piece is 35 cm long and is attached to the groundboard with a pair of lagbolts. I pre-drilled the holes first so the wood would not split. Then I attached the original feet from the scope to the bottom end of the legs. I do intend to paint them at some future date.
In the end it raises everything up by 35 cm in height.
I have found no problem with the legs during observing. I had been concerned that they would get kicked, but it has not happened. I also think this would be helpful if you were to be viewing in a field with tall grass.
I find observing much more comfortable this way, even though it now requires standing rather then sitting on a little stool. Aiming the scope is much much easier now, especially for those objects near the zenith.
As far as moving goes, I carry the OTA outside by itself using the straps and lay it on the styrofoam molds that came with the scope. The straps are a big help considering that the scope is sometimes covered in dew or frost. It also makes it easier to open/close the door and hold the scope at the same time.
As far as the rocker box goes, it is a little more cumbersome to move through doorways now. In order to get it outside from its resting place that you see, I go through 3 doorways. I have to be careful to maneuver the legs around the door jam.
THe only drawback would be if someone did not have room in their vehicle to transport it if they had a small car.
The heads of the lag bolts would require some shimming of the teflon pads. In my case, however, I had already installed thicker teflon pads because I was experiencing some scraping with the original design.
Garry
Last edited by Late_Cretaceous; 18-11-2004 at 02:26 AM.
I was thinking of making a base like that, to lift it off the ground by 20-30cm, because as I said, my neighbours fences are quite tall and so an extra 30cm would help the scope get over them. A couple of things that might stop me though:
1. The observing stool I built might not go so high.. like you said, now you have to stand instead of sit down while observing.. i've found that if you can a comfortable seat and stay comfortable, you can stare through the eyepiece for ages without wobbling and adjusting your head and neck etc.. I don't really want to go back to standing.
2. I don't know if I'd want to attach it permanently to the base. Like you said, it's bigger and bulkier now and harder to fit through doorways and would definitely take up more room in teh car. If I was going to make one, i'd attach the legs with a board on top, so that I can lift the whole dob base and sit it on top of the new base. That way they can still be transported independantly, and if you don't need the height, you can still put the existing base on the ground and use your stool etc.
The luggage straps look good, I was going to get some myself originally, but since I built and use the trolley for moving and storing the scope, I've only ever lifted the OTA off the base once or twice since then. To carry it I just put my right hand down at the mirror end and my left wrapped around the OTA at the top end.
I'm almost glad I don't have a 12".. that would really be getting to the limit of portability.
Your comment about the stool stiuation got me thinking. Sitting is preferable. I guess now I will have to put extensions on my foldable stool legs.
In any case, I am very satisfied with having the whole telelscope raised higher.
Howver I think having a removable platform or set of legs would have been the best way the way to go.
Yeh it's a good thing, that's for sure. Mine started sticking again, so last night I added some "super sliders" to basically replace the teflon pads.. I also added another 2 washers because the super-sliders are higher than the teflon pads.
Swivelling by itself seems great now, haven't used it under teh stars yet but it's feeling pretty good.
hi everybody ...and high fives to all of those excellent mods...hehehe...check this guy out...I've never seen so many mods in my entire existence !!!...you'll find the web page here ---------> http://www.tomhole.com/ORION%20XT10.htm
I am surprised and astounded...descriing myself as "not handy" is an understatement...
In spite of this I completed a couple of astro projects today!!!
I finally got around to doing the "milk jug washer" modification on our Dob...and I can not beleive how much that small change has improved the movement !
It went like a hot knife through butter!
I got so inspired that I went to Bunnings so I could complete a few other projects...
I went wild there (no kids or wife and lots of "man stuff" I was in hawg heaven)...they have hand trucks (dollys) on sale...big red ones for around $25...add a few straps to the shopping trolley and viola I've got an easy way to move my scope around...by this time the adrenaline was really flowing...
Having seen some of the other modifications on the site and accessories I went for broke...
At Bunnings I got and then tried some sleazy knock-off "slide glides" and rushed home to try them...after having seen the improvement that the milk jug washers made I thought I'd go for the whole shebang...
This addition was horrible...they were much worse than the teflon and washers alone...so I ripped them back off...this is how most of my projects go except usually it takes a professional to undue my damage...but not to be stopped I continued on in my hormone induced modification/handy man frenzy...to the neat part...having been waiting for the right moment, I decided to put my Telrad on my scope...between the spotting scope and focuser...this meant that I had to trim the base of the Telrad to make it fit...so I whipped out my little jig saw and did it!
It looks great (well to me it does) and I can still use the spotting scope...success.
So for the day...milk jug washers (accomplished)..."slide glides" (tried, failed, removed), hand truck to move scope (accomplished) and Telrad mounted...(big smile accomplished)...
I would not have tried any of these if not for all of your inspirations (and pictures) showing that these things are possible.
) and the observing chair, and I put some little padded furniture sliders on the inside of the base where the bottom of the OTA has a habit of crashing into when you're pointing up near the zenith..
:p
