I am looking for a heavy duty tripod to carry an Az mount for use with a refractor. Somethin like a stellarvue M2, giro2 or Unistar delux. Wondering if anyone had experience with any of these and what to buy locally. Stellarvue's M2 can be used with Manfrotto tripods but these look expensive for the weight carrying ability. Especially when Oberwork surveyors tripods can hold a lot more weight and look far more stable. It will probably only need to handle 8kg but i'm a fan of more is better theory.
you could look for a surveyors tripod - that are great i have one i bought secondhand - other than that there isn't too much locally-of the brands you mention you would be buying them into the country i think - other than that its modify a strong telescope tripod
i agree the manfrotto are expensive - but they really are built nicely..expensive when you get to 8kg..if you look for slik tripods- there are some older ones on ebay which are very sturdy
The walnut tripod William Optics used to bundle with their EazyTouch Alt-Az mount is rather beefy. It will carry much more than 8kg, not sure what it's limits are though.
Lee Andrews has the tripod only for $349 on his site.
I've got a giro mount that I bought here secondhand. It's fantastic to use and is very well made. Mine is mounted on a Quickset Sampson tripod which I picked up for a song at a local flea market. The good thing with the Quicksrt is that it has an elevator which helps with the vertical movement in alt/az.
For alternatives, surveyor tripods are usually very sturdy and built for a lot of punishment, and can generally take a fair weight. Or, there are the steel leg astro tripods that are available. Another option is to replace the alumium legs on, eg. an eq3/4/5 with hardwood. The big photo tripods are excellent but are of course very expensive. With any of the astro or surveyor tripods you will have to rig up some sort of connecting plate.
