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With 3 short pieces of tubing, the scope packs up into a roughly 40 cm cube for transport. Will go on the seat of a car.
The whole scope is made from hardwood core, hardwood veneer marine grade Gaboon plywood. Finished with multiple layers of exterior grade polyurethane. A lot more time consuming then painting, but there was a lot of exposed wood surfaces in this scope and it seemed a shame not to show it off.
The GSO optics are a good set and very sharp. The motions of the scope are light and buttery smooth, thanks to Ebony Star, Car Wax, the right PSI on the pads, 70 spacing of the Alt pads, large Alt. bearings and shimmimg around the centre of the Az. pivot.
The large 40mm parallel poles are quick and easy to setup, can conveniently have finderscopes, sliding counterweights etc. fitted to them and are plenty rigid for this size scope. In fact, Plettstone used this design for up to 18 inches of aperture.
Once again, this scope is shroudless, instead using baffles in front of the focuser, behind the secondary and in front of the primary to block stray light.
The scope can either be packed up into a small package for transport, or left assembled and moved around as a whole unit at a moments noticed- it is very light. In fact, this is going to be my new "grab and go" scope at home!
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