Hi All, I promised some pic's of my old home-made 12.5in F6.7 newtonian and custom built EQ mount from eon's ago. This has been collecting dust under my house for near on 15 years now...
The mount is truly massive and was machined by someone I'd call as much an artist as a tradesman (not me obviously)
. It's shown here with my eq5 pier mount C9.25 in the background. Note especially the twin 16inch brass and aluminium machined drive wheels on Both axis. A close up of the declination shows how a stepper feeds a wormwheel then a larger stainless steel worm that feeds the main drive wheel (WD40 can for scale).
THe OTA is more in my style (you've got to remember I'm the sort of person who makes an observatory dome out of paper mache). Anyway, rough compressed cardboard tubing (2.2m long!!!) painted with mirror mounts made from ply, hacksaw blades and whatever else came to hand. The spring-loaded primary mirror cell surprisingly still seems very smooth for collimating. For that extra quirky touch the back of the mirrorblank was signed by Sir Patrick Moore when he was out in the late 80's.
Anyway, there she be. Crying out for love and begging me to resurrect her. Hmmm an F6.7 newtonian with a miniscule secondary might make quite a nice planetary scope with a little work - now if only I could remember how to do things with my hands
cheers,