Telescope Reviews: The joy of a project.........completed ?

For the last three years I've been wrestling with the construction of my mount. It started as an attempt to make a mount as cheaply and simply as possible. Materials at hand included 1/4" aluminum plate, various pieces of thick wood laminate trusses, steel support lolly columns and the pieces of my TL systems eq platform.

My philosophy was to try the simplest thing first. Thus my first attempt was a lolly column axle on pvc pipe fitting bushings....ahem. Too simple. Then I tried nylon bushings, then steel castors, then I tried roller transfer bearings, then I tried real bearings mounted to carry the drive sector,didn't work either, and then finally with real bearings on a real steel shaft, the shaft stiffened with the lolly column filled with concrete I finally achieved smooth motion. I won't even go into all the variations of drive system wheels and surfaces and configurations I tried except to say I came full circle back to steel wheel on wood.

Then there was the matter of integrating the Orion intelliscope system. Finding my ascension declination axis's were not perpendiculer. How to measure and correct same. Finding I needed a way to rotate the scope. Realizing I needed to make a shed for it because by now it weighed 200 lbs. Pier. Deck extension. Ethernet cables to inside the house.

Anyhow you get the picture. A lot of work. So it was with extreme satisfaction, that the other night, I finally found myself under clear moonless skies with a scope with clean collimated optics, laser, finder scope main scope and imaging scope all aligned, stepper motor at the right speed, it's wheel gripping and rolling nicely and my digital setting circles and the planetarium software playing nice and giving me accurate push-to's and leading me to some cool obscure open clusters among other things.

Don't get me wrong. I loved doing it all. The dissapointments and failures led to that most enjoyable part of it all, the joy of creating. The fun of thinking up a new way and then trying it out. In retrospect I was pretty stupid about some things and made it harder on myself than was necessary. It stretched my mind to try to come grips with the whole geometry of the thing, spatial relationships etc. and although my friends are impressed, for some reason I feel humbled. I'm maybe not as smart as I thought I was. Just smart enough to get myself into trouble.

Anyhow, I thought you guys could relate. I just have to crow a little after all this even though she's a turkey.

I'm not sure if I can handle being done with it. What am I gonna do now!

What's that? A little shakiness? I wonder how a trailer hub bearing wheel setup might work......................................

John

I have to update my Picassa page but it'll give you the basic idea of what I did if you need a laugh.

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Orion xt10i on an ugly homemade english fork eq mount
A stepper motor,wires and stuff
Push to digital circles(COL) into "The Sky"
"The Noble Turkey Observatory".... (a small shed)
http://picasaweb.google.com/stardustborn/NobleTurkeyObservatory
Orion Starblast 4.5 imaging scope
Meade DSI 2 pro mono

...and a piece of space to peer into