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Thanks for your praise! I am quite rapt in how this mount has turned out. I think that mounting it on a heavy, solid wood board and platform has really helped its stability, its MUCH more steady than a tripod now. And, yes, being such a light scope makes this thing workable. I have found that whenever you want to build something mechanical, you have to over-engineer it by at least 2x if you want it to last. It's one thing to make something that works, the problem I've found is that it's much harder to make something that works AND lasts as well.
Next, I'm going to build a plywood box top that simply goes over the whole unit, like a sewing machine case, and you just clip it on to the base and pick it up by a handle on the top and walk away with it!
I'm also going to try to make a simple tracking motor setup. I wanted to make it out of easy to get, common bits and pieces. I'm thinking of using a $5 Kambrooks 240v timer as a drive motor - one of those ones that you plug into a power point, and then plug a heater or whatever into, and you can set it to switch on or off at a certain time. It has a dial on it that you insert plasic pins to set the on/off time. The dial takes 24 hours to do 1 rotation. I thought I could use the dial to drive a pulley wheel on my dobson mount. Provided it spins in the right direction hehe!! I might be able to rip the motor out and put a 12V motor in it for battery power out in the field, if I can get the motor speed right. Then I can use it for photography as well, since the scope has a T-piece camera adapter.
I think whenever I get a bigger scope (maybe a 10" or even a 12"), I'll look back on this scope with fondness because of how easy and portable it is, and with all these features I've built for it that I won't have on the big one!
Cheers, Graham
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