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Thank you for all the tips.
I am not with the Society. I have been thinking about going to some meetings but between my work and my family it is really too hard to get there. I do most of my astro stuff after kids bed time by which time it is often too late for meetings.
I have tried couple of plywood suppliers asking for off cuts of marine ply but they do not have them. New marine ply is very expensive and more than I would need. I think I will take Brent's suggestions of using structural ply from Bunnings, at least for the "proof-of-concept" project. I have also settled with aluminium tubes as the trusses for similar reasons.
I do agree that the weight saving / stiffness improvement is probably minimal between a stock 8" and a DIY truss as the stock OTA is only 8kg. The reasons why I kind of choose this is because of cost and the wish to stay under 1000 mm in focal length. I guess I could go 250 mm f/4 which will give 1000 mm focal length - but it is more expensive and if the project flops I cannot put the optics back into the stock tube and use it with my NEQ6. May be I will get the mirrors and focusers by themselves only to save cost...?
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