Hi all,
A few nights back I used this scope to try out a few different eyepieces. I placed her on the lawn in my backyard and found that the mount was surprisingly stiff. Thing is, the lawn could have done with a cut. That ment as this the legs of this scope are quite short, the ground board as a whole was in contact with the lawn. The result was that the whole mount became a bit of a slog-fest to use rather than its normal silky smooth action to overcome the mushyness of the lawn.
Another thing I noticed was that this scope was just a bit too low to the ground making it difficult to use whilst seated.
The solution to both these problems was to make a tripod for it.
I took some inspiration from the tripod for
"A scope like Alice" by Ronald Ravenburg. I liked the simple tapered shape of the legs. All I needed to do was decide how long to make them, and cut them out of a length of pine 4X2 I had. A scrap bit of ply, half a dozen monster screws and a bit of play with a mitre saw and a custom tripod is made. All stuff I had at home too. The only money spent was on a pack of platic furniture glides nailed into the tips of the tripod.
As the vertical travel of the eyepiece with this scope is around 300mm, a sitting in a chair is a very comfortable proposition now, rather than on one's knees.
I had a bit of a play with it on the lawn to gauge how it now responds - not an ounce more of effort needed to move her than when she's on concrete,
.
There was another change done to the rocker, done some time ago. The original angular spacing of the Teflon pads was done as suggested for large DIY dobs, some 30degrees. Because the scope centre of gravity is so close to the geometric centre of the OTA, it ment that changing between large to small eyepieces the centre of gravity shifted to the extent that a large magnet was needed to act as a counter balance.
The solution was to recut the cradle and replace the Teflon pads at a much larger angular separation. Now I can insert a puny 6mm Plossl, swap it for a chunky 30mm 2" EP and no magnet is needed to re-establish the balance. Easy! Sure the action in altitude is a little firmer, but after waxing the PVC bearings, the action is again very smooth, and no backlash either.
This is such a sweet RFT to use!