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Well, I think it works! (But I need to learn how to fine tune it.)
I was able to do about 45min of testing tonight, and Jupiter was my subject. It took less than 5 minutes to set it up. I used a compass to aim it at true South (taking into account magnetic variation for my location). I folded the hinge open and put an inclinometer on the lower angle and then raised one of the legs until I got it showing my latitude.
Next, I put the scope on it and lined up Jupiter in the 10mm eyepiece. Sure enough, twisting the threaded rod re-centred Jupiter in the eyepiece after it moved. However, after a while it was drifting in one direction. It was able to make about 3-5 passes across the eyepiece before drifting out of the FOV at the top. It was moving left to right and, since that's east to west, it must have been drifting south?? It was taking about 1:40 to cross the width of the eyepiece and about 10 minutes before it drifted out the top. I tried raising the southern leg a little. This seemed to slow the rate of drift, but it was hard to judge without more testing.
Overall, I was pretty happy with the first test. I don't see why it shouldn't work more accurately, so I'm hoping the drift is just a matter of fine-tuning the setup (which I intend to research tomorrow - there's a great post over on CN at the moment). I'm especially happy with how it performed considering it cost less than $50 in materials and only a few hours to make (and my carpentry skills are lousy).
Adjusting the scope certainly caused a little bit of wobble, but as i noted earlier, it didn't seem too bad and it would settle pretty quickly. I'm certain it could be made more rigid. Motorising it would obviously improve it, but even a more convenient hand crank might make the small investment worthwhile.
I think the 'Mk II' version I described earlier would be *much* more rigid. Incidentally, I had the angle backwards on the one I posted earlier. The one I've attached here would allow the use of braces to make it even more rigid. The shaded bits could be pieces of ply.
Cheers,
CL.
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