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Old 22-09-2013, 09:31 AM
glend (Glen)
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glend is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Lake Macquarie
Posts: 7,121
I love my 12" dob but agree it can be a 'pain' to move around. I took the early advice from IIS and installed the azimuth circle on the base, and built a leveling base which is attached to the ground board. I use a good hand truck to move it from the shed to the various viewing points in my yard (see the mod info in Projects and Articles for how to move a dob around).. A good compass and laser line drawer were used to map out true north on my driveway and patio so that I can place the dob in exactly the right position with little work. Just draw a line with a permanent marker and place the north (0 degree) point of your dob circle on the line and adjust the rear 180 degree point to sit on the line in the back, and it will be perfectly setup. Get a digitial inclinemetre with magnetic base (from ebay) to do all your ALt readings for you, just attach it to the top of the tube via the magnetic base.

I now have encoders on my dob, feeding to the Astro Devices Nexus wifi unit and interfaced to Sky Safari Plus running on my Android tablet, this is the ideal low cost 'Pushto' system (for me).

All of these things make the dob much easier to use.

As far as going bush with the 12" dob, it can be a challenge, but if you can get it out to dark skies you won't want to part with it as generally speaking they are the best value you will find in terms of light gathering ability for the $.
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