4 replies to this topic

[evm]

I bought this orange tube C6 on a GP mount new in 1983 (or so I guess). I was using it for visual as well as fledgling astrophotography. I pulled it out of storage and started to clean it up which brought back a lot of memories. Somewhere I have a motorized clack drive for it powered by a bunch of C cells... Anyway on to the question:

 

There was an article I think in Sky and Tel on mods to the mount to stiffen it up. I did some of the mods. Does anyone remember which issue the mods were in? Of course point me to the archived and I'll see if I can find it also.

 

As you can see in the second photo one of the mods was to fill the mount base with epoxy to stiffen up. Looks like I used JB Weld.

 

Also, on my mount the latitude stop screw "fixture" broke and I jury rigged something up. Anyone have a spare?

 

 

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[CHASLX200]

That is a Polaris mount. The GP did not come out until around 1991.

[tturtle]

I found the weak point that allows too much flexure to be how the legs are attached to the mount base. It’s essentially impossible to tighten the wooden legs enough to get rid of this flexure. An easy way to dramatically stiffen this mount is therefore to just get rid of the tripod and mount base and attach the Polaris mount directly to top of a survey tripod. See the photo below.  The difference is like night and day and only takes a survey tripod which are available everywhere fairly cheap plus the center bolt for attachment. It also lightens the mount weight if the tripod is aluminum. I bought the survey tripod off of eBay for 50$ and the silver/black even matches the Polaris look pretty well.

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Edited by tturtle, 28 May 2023 - 04:09 PM.

[evm]

Yup, a Polaris mount - My bad.

 

 Just interested in history on the mods to stiffen it up. Kinda a walk through memory lane. The C6 was my first real telescope.

 

 I use (or used to use when I was doing hypered 2415) a G-11 that I still have with an 8" Schmidt camera that I also still have. See the photo of NGC7000 in the Caldwell objects book for an example of my work. Just rebuilt the G-11 and planning on doing some imaging with an Atik 383L+ on it.

 

 Best

[deSitter]

I bought this orange tube C6 on a GP mount new in 1983 (or so I guess). I was using it for visual as well as fledgling astrophotography. I pulled it out of storage and started to clean it up which brought back a lot of memories. Somewhere I have a motorized clack drive for it powered by a bunch of C cells... Anyway on to the question:

 

There was an article I think in Sky and Tel on mods to the mount to stiffen it up. I did some of the mods. Does anyone remember which issue the mods were in? Of course point me to the archived and I'll see if I can find it also.

 

As you can see in the second photo one of the mods was to fill the mount base with epoxy to stiffen up. Looks like I used JB Weld.

 

Also, on my mount the latitude stop screw "fixture" broke and I jury rigged something up. Anyone have a spare?

Most of those mods bring a phrase to mind - trust the engineers That is, they don't help and they lessen the value of the mount.

 

-drl