[AlexN]

I'm going to be building pier in the coming months to reduce the setup and polar alignment time for my home setup, however, I have ants EVERYWHERE in the yard, and when it rains, anything that sticks out of the ground gets absolutely swarmed...

I figure I have two options.

1. Have the permanent pier and mount head adapter outside, but bring in all the gear including mount head when I'm done. Obviously I can make plenty of reference lines on head and head adapter to ensure when I set it up, it's as close to exactly where it was as possible. Same for the altitude adjustment...

This really negates the "improved setup time" aspect, but should yield repeatable, acceptable polar alignment almost instantly..

2. Find a way to make the pier not friendly to climbing insects, and that way I can leave the mount head on there with an inverted water drum or bin over it to keep it out of the weather.

I would still be bringing optics/electronics inside, just the mechanical mount outside.

What are your thoughts? What's the best compromise here?

I feel like a pier where I have to move the head inside every time is not MUCH better than 3 small concrete pads with markings for the tripod legs in them, and then registration markers on the tripod head adapter to head base, head base to azimuth base, altitude to ra axis etc...

If that's my best bet, so be it.

Unfortunately, building an Observatory is off the cards for the moment, and no doubt it'd be crawling with ants within 5 days of being built anyway.

Help me decide what to do...