dikman
30-09-2022, 05:15 PM
The other day I picked up a Meade Field tripod, and it's quite a beast! There's a few posts on Cloudy Nights about these things, with a common "complaint" being a sloppy fit where the legs attach to the base. Sure enough, mine was extremely wobbly until the leg clamp was tightened up. I didn't like it so used washers to pack them out and loctited the screws.
The next thing was to make a new screw to clamp the mount to the base. The tripod used a 13 x 1.5mm threaded rod to clamp the Meade mount so I used a new piece, turned the end down in the lathe and threaded it 10 x 1.25mm to match the mount I had.
The mount is a Vixen knock-off that I picked up cheap some time ago. I stripped it down and it cleaned up pretty good, the only minor issue is some backlash in the drive gears which I can't get rid of. It has a tracking motor on one axis, and I thought of converting it to a go-to mount, but at a cost of $8-900 I'm not convinced it would be good value. As it stands I now have a functional, basic (and solid) mount.
Prior to this tripod I had the mount on a Manfrotto heavy duty tripod, but it's not in the same class as this wee beastie.:)
The next thing was to make a new screw to clamp the mount to the base. The tripod used a 13 x 1.5mm threaded rod to clamp the Meade mount so I used a new piece, turned the end down in the lathe and threaded it 10 x 1.25mm to match the mount I had.
The mount is a Vixen knock-off that I picked up cheap some time ago. I stripped it down and it cleaned up pretty good, the only minor issue is some backlash in the drive gears which I can't get rid of. It has a tracking motor on one axis, and I thought of converting it to a go-to mount, but at a cost of $8-900 I'm not convinced it would be good value. As it stands I now have a functional, basic (and solid) mount.
Prior to this tripod I had the mount on a Manfrotto heavy duty tripod, but it's not in the same class as this wee beastie.:)