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Subject: Re2: Opinions of 16" LX200
From: Amtsgymnasiet,Sonderborg,DK,AGE
Reply To: mapug@shore.net
Date: Wed Oct 18 00:44:00 1995


<The Meade equatorial arrangement looks like it may be a little
<underdesigned. It sort of hangs out there in a scary way. You may want to
<get engineering details on it and/or build a subsitute.

The price of the 16" equatorial pier+shipping is quite high.

In our case, the local industry managed :

1 triangle steel plate, 1 cm thickness plus 1.8meter 15" Iron tube (1cm
thickness too) cut and velded to our latitude for half the price. The
construction is quite heavy, about 200 kg, the mounting cost me blood, sweat
and 8 students...

If you construct such a homemade tripod, it is a good idea to mount the base
drive on a steel plate, which is adjustable with 3 pull and 3 press bolts : .

**


** **

The top bolts will allow North South adjustement, the 2 other bolt positions
will give the needed east-west press/pull adjustement.

As such, the 16" is a powerfull telescope, my students have photographed
objects like NGC6946, stars visible as single stars on SBIG-s CCD demodisk,
show up as double stars when working on this scope.

However, as the proceeding one month discussion pointed out, there are still
some child deseases, but I am confident Meade will solve these too.

Best greetings,


Mogens Winther.

High School Teacher.