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Subject: Re: [M]: [LX-200/8"] Height/width of Fully Extended Tripon
From: Bill Arnett
Reply To: mapug@shore.net
Date: Mon Mar 03 01:18:04 1997

At 10:20 PM -0800 3/2/97, wayne t. watson wrote:
>... I may build an elevated platform next
>to the house about 10 feet off the ground, and right
>next to a wall of the house for support. I'd then
>put up a pier to the floor of the observing platform.
>Probably a two or three inch pipe, 12 to 15 feet long,
>with the lower portion buried in several feet of
>concrete...

I have no experience building telescope piers but it's hard to imagine how
such a thing as you describe would be stable enough. Even filled with sand
a pipe that small and that long is going to vibrate. I would guess that if
you want to be that high off the ground you're going to have to think about
a pier at least 12" in diameter maybe considerably more. At that point you
probably want to go with concrete instead of steel pipe.

---
Bill Arnett              billa@znet.com           http://www.seds.org/billa/

  "I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day; but when I search
   out the massed wheeling circles of the stars, my feet no longer touch
   the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself, I take my fill of
   ambrosia, the food of the gods." -- Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy)