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So you dig a big hole in the ground and fill it with a ton or two of cement. Maybe you form a pier at the same time or maybe you bolt on a substantial steel pier. Then you top it off with three or four relatively skinny bolts and a couple of plates of steel.
Why?
Equatorial mounts do not need to be fastened to adjustable plates for the purpose of leveling. They really don't. Honest. Equatorial mounts do not need to be leveled. Not when they're on a tripod in the field or on a pier in an observatory.
All a person has done is massively compromise the integrity of their system. That's all. And they've done it because other people do it, none of them understanding exactly why they are doing it but only because they've heard it's the way it should be done.
Equatorial mounts do not need to be leveled, therefore they do not need to be fastened to freaky plate-n-bolt contraptions slapped onto an otherwise good pier simply because they saw a few pictures on some guy's website. Some guy who doesn't understand a darn thing about the mechanics of it all.
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