Quote:
Originally Posted by marki
Thanks Brendan  , Matt I will let you know when I give it a red hot go in a few weeks (holidays). I have mounted the scope on the wedge and kicked the crap out of the pier whilst looking through the EP and the damping rate looks promising with the wind having little effect (fully supported wedge helps). This has cost me a lot of money to achieve and I am only persisting as I am a stubborn old fart  . If this doesen't work as well as I want then the tube will be de-forked and mounted on a G11. It is not impossible to image with the fork but you will be deleting a lot of useless data. For Nicholas being a student about to go to uni I think it would be far more practical (and cheaper) to go for an EQ hence my position on this.
Mark |
Sounds good. My 12 fork mounted Meade is now mounted to a custom built pier thats filled with 60kgs of fine white sand and has a 20mm full size top plate.its also bolted to 2 cubes of concrete and is rock solid in Alt/Az mode. It perfect for visual and my Mallincam use which is all I use it for ATM.. Damping with say a 13mm eyepiece is less than half second if you kick the pier.
I want to possibly throw it onto an ultra wedge next year when I get a dedicated CCD camera.
My observatory walls are 2.1mtrs around so we are protected from the wind to some extent.
I will be keen to here your results.
Matt.