[Doomsayer]

A number of poeple have expressed interest in my recent project which replaces the original steel tube in a Vixen VC200L with a very rigid carbon fibre truss assembly optimised for imaging - hence this post. I showed one of these to a number of people at SPSP - feedback seemed very favourable. It broadly resembles a little RCOS carbon fibre truss OTA with over and under dovetail plates and black anodised milled aluminium plate.

As with many other VC200L users, for some years I have been keen to enhance the performance of the out of the box VC200L Having recently constructed two 12.5" CF truss tube ritchey chretien telescopes I had some useful design & build experience to draw on.

The main aims were:
1. Retain the existing primary & secondary mirror assemblies
2. Maximise thermal stability, rigidity and optical alignment of the OTA and dovetail mounts
3. Reduce the thickness of the secondary spider vanes (originally about 5mm thick in mine)
4. Use off the shelf components where applicable.

I'll add a few posts here which give an idea of what it looks like and how it is done. I am very happy with it so far. I've made two conversions so far.

I have been talking to Paul Van Slyke of VSI about replacing the existing R&P assembly with something more hefty.

guy