Telescope Reviews: Poor tripod

A couple of months back, I purchased an Orion Paragon HD-F2 tripod to mount my 15x70 binoculars on. Today when I took them outside, I noticed that some of the threads are stripping from the crank up pole in the middle. The reason for this is that you have to tighten the azimuth and altitude clutches so tight to hold binoculars on them with any rigidity/stability and the minute you begin to push on them, it rotates the pole slightly, which is less than desireable. It's not heavy enough, maybe you can mount a finderscope on them, or a small camera.

In all good faith, I cannot recommend this tripod be used for binoculars of this size. It is far too light and the cheap thin aluminum that it is made from is easilly damaged. I am usually pretty careful with my stuff, so if I've found this out this fast, it must be pretty lousy. At $100 it is in a category where one should expect more, especially from a company this big in the Astro marketplace.

Just a heads up in case you are looking to a tripod to mount larger binoculars, you may want to reconsider.

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http://astronomyguy63.blogspot.com/

LXD75 SN6-UHTC
Cave Astrola 10" f/5
Garrett 15x70/FarSight
Canon XS (1000D)

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