Help! Vibrating Telescope!

In article ,
lid says...

I can tighten up and isolate the mount--no problem fabricating stuff
like that myself. OR...I'll just throw it on the camera tripod. THAT
tripod has full motion, full lock-downs, liquid-damped motion, etc.
It wasn't the most expensive one at Radio Shack, but it's been
nothing but good even with some mechanical problems in the legs.

It sounds like you have a nice video head there. Have you considered
building your own replacement head for the mount?

I'm going to have to; there's just too much about the Polaris tripod I
don't like...and I'm too much like my grandfather (he was the town fix-it
man in the '30s and '40s--there wasn't a lot he couldn't fix or make) to
just leave it alone.

It seems we have a similar dislike of flimsy mounts. There's a number of
inexpensive equatorial designs that would give you a rock solid mount,
most of which can be made without the need or a lathe or milling machine.

Cheers,
Ian

Ian W wrote in
:

It seems we have a similar dislike of flimsy mounts. There's a number
of inexpensive equatorial designs that would give you a rock solid
mount, most of which can be made without the need or a lathe or
milling machine.

Time to do some research, then.

--
J W

*sig has expired. Go to alt.hacker and ask for a crack for it.*

In article ,
lid says...
Ian W wrote in
:

It seems we have a similar dislike of flimsy mounts. There's a number
of inexpensive equatorial designs that would give you a rock solid
mount, most of which can be made without the need or a lathe or
milling machine.

Time to do some research, then.

Sounds like it's time indeed. There are some old designs from the 50s and
60s that are eminently suitable for a 3" scope using combinations of
threaded rod for the axies and wooden blocks to hold the bearings. While
they aren't pretty they are highly functional. If you're interested I
could knock you up some rough drawings of how to build one. Total cost
would be about 20 bucks US to build a small EQ head that would hold up to
a 4.5" Newtonian.