Quote:
Originally Posted by noswonky
That looks very nice. I made something like this to hold an iPad on my 12 inch Skywatcher - but only made of wood.
On a side note - How old are your Skywatcher scopes and what's the tracking like?
I ask because mine is a very early model which I bought in 2010 when the goto dobs first came out. The tracking has always been a bit jerky in the azimuth axis. An object in the eyepiece will drift for a few seconds and then the scope will jump suddenly to correct it, and then it drifts again and corrects again. It's not really a problem for visual observing, but it can be annoying when using a video camera. So I was wondering if the tracking is smoother on later models.
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My 8" skywatcher is probably 4-5 years old, and the 16" is only a few months old (well I've had it since January - not sure how long it sat in a warehouse). Both of them track very well - certainly no "drift" as you describe it, which seems quite odd. There are very minor corrections as it tracks, and I'm pretty fastidious in terms of leveling the base and having the time/location as accurate as possible when doing a two star alignment, but that shouldn't affect the actual smoothness of the tracking. Perhaps your az axis needs a bit of loosening/greasing? I've never touched the gears on my 8" but I've heard it's not too hard to do - I believe there's a PDF floating around that explains how to do it. The 8" gears would have to be modified internally; the 16" model has external wheels to loosen the axes for when you don't want to use the GOTO, which is then very smooth to move around.
Nice Mod
