Binocular parallelogram mounting

[RobF (Rob)]

Peter (Peter_4059) and many others on the web have kindly shared their binocular mounting designs for all to see, so I've included some images of a rig I've assembled this year from an old unused Tasco 4.5" reflector tripod mount/bearing, some metal parts from Bunnings, and a metal binocular mount from Andrews. The metal bars and plates are separated by milk-bottle washers, ala Peter. The counterweight shaft had me stumped until I noticed an old broken microphone stand lying around at home - "that'll do!".

The tripod isn't overly strong or sturdy, particularly for twisting vibrations, but doing this saved me having to make a swivel bearing or buy something suitable. I'm pleased to say the whole rig was a pleasure to use at its first dark sky outing at Leyburn recently. A little settling vibration is present, but its really inconsequential compared to the endless wobbles when hand holding. I've never had such good binoc views, and am looking forward to doing some more touring between imaging sessions at Astrofest. You have to jump about with your chair a bit of course, but decent swathes of the Milky Way can be explored without too much moving around, and I'm particularly pleased I took the extra trouble to build additional movement into the end mounting for this purpose. Happy to provide measurements, parts, prices detail for anyone wanting more detail.

More pics here for those interested:
https://picasaweb.google.com/UserRob...Parallelogram#

p.s. Thanks to Peter Ridgeway for giving me a couple of spare old 5kg counterweights with my last astro-purchase

[Miaplacidus (Brian)]

Nice! Cleverly done.

[RobF (Rob)]

Thanks Brian
Nothing too flash - cutting and drilling down on hunks of wood on the concrete garage floor over a series of weekends, but reasonably decent against my usual level of workmanship

[brian nordstrom (As avatar)]

thanks for that Rob , I have been thinking about building one of these for years now and seeing this has rekindled my desires .
Brian.

[RobF (Rob)]

Thanks Brian.

To be honest I initially felt a parallelogram was way in excess of my needs. I had half-baked thoughts of a wooden beam with a tripod ball mount on one end (possibly also with a decent binoc mount but not essential) and a counterwt on other end, with the centre of gravity pivitong on a vertical wooden beam. I really didn't appreciate the huge benefits of being able to lift and lower the whole assembly to different heights for different users (or same user in a different position) while still keep the object centred pretty well (until doing quite a bit of research on the web and thinking how I'd really like to be using my binocs in the field).

If you have even half decent binocs it makes them SO much more usable for some quality astronomy time
I've only realised in recent years just how many faint objects can be visible in binocs from a dark sky site. Fun to hunt them down while imaging sometimes.