Chuck, If you wouldn't mind, I think I speak for the rest of us out here when I say that it would be very interesting for us if you would carefully document the step-by-step details of your mount fabrication; lengths, sizes, costs, materials, and of course pictures, etc., all helps for those of us that are not so handy with the tools to take heart and perhaps make our own attempt at it (assuming too that you don't get too many "exotic" specialty tools involved in the process) :O) What I'd like to see someday, for example, is a post here that reads something like: "How to build an excellent Home Depot bino mount for only $24.95"; hopefully that's not too wishful thinking... Looking forward to the upcoming Binopalooza... Rich --- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote:
I delivered the Sportsman's Guide 10x50's to Bruce Grim today. He was very impressed with the imagery as well as construction, and is ordering a pair for himself.
These will be part of the inventory of SPOC-2, so SLAS members and guests will have a chance to try them out. I dropped off 2 pair.
He also told me of his own experience in a side-by-side comparison of the Bears with Fujinon 16x70mm. In his opinion, the Bears were a tad sharper (!) but the Fuji's had slightly better throughput (expected from the better coatings).
I had a hard time with this, but I trust Bruce's judgement in telescope matters completely, he's been doing this a lot longer than I have, and I've been in the game about 34 years now! I would like to perform a comparison myself, though. There is a difference between general quality of a product line, and the quality of individual units. Maybe he got the best Bear ever made, and a worn-out Fuji. But, who knows?
I told him about our plans for Binopalooza, and he wants to attend.
I also got to examine his mini-parallelogram mount. I liked the way he didn't make the arms overly-long. Some of the parallelogram mounts I've seen have a height range of 2' up to 8', and I just can't see making arms that long unless you plan to have a group of toddlers and NBA stars at the same star-party. He also used square aluminum tubing from the home improvement center, making drilling a whole lot easier. His use of double-springs eliminated the counterweight, another nice feature, plus it mounts on a standard commercial camera tripod.
I found an old wooden tripod off of a Japanese refractor in my basement, and will use that as a foundation for my own mount, borrowing some of Bruce's ideas...the short arms, namely...but I think I'll use round aluminum tubing just because I've got it on-hand already. I want to have this thing done before Binopalooza. I plan to size the arms for my own use rather than "one size fits all".
Hopefully Bruce will bring his set-up so everyone can see it.
Chuck
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