I know this is tongue-in-cheek, Guy- it's way out of my league, budget-wise. But a fellow actually did mount twin 8-inch Newtonians on a chair some years ago. It was a featured article in either Amateur Astronomy or ATM Journal; I can't recall which one at this point. And his chair was completely powered, using the guts of two battery-powered drills. The twin truss-tube approach fails near the zenith, as room for the observers body quickly diminishes. "Dobsons hole" strikes again. Remember that binocular telescopes are not the "ultimate binocular" in as much as the FOV is way too small and magnification way too high for RFT viewing. Generally speaking, the larger the aperture, the longer the focal length- you tend to lose the wide-field, low-power aspect in a hurry. But it would be fun to test drive one of those big suckers for a weekend, wouldn't it? --- diveboss@xmission.com wrote:
Here is the solution to your binocular problems. I think the seat and springs are optional. With the right trailer hitch you could haul this anywhere.
http://www.jimsmobile.com/images/rb16_prototype1.jpg
Quoting Canopus56 <canopus56@yahoo.com>:
--- Chuck Hards <chuckhards@yahoo.com> wrote: <snip>
Without changing the design much, careful choice of materials and attention to details can make a huge difference in both load capacity and performance. <snip> The large bino mounts that are substantial enough for heavy loads have ergonomic problems, as Kurt pointed out.
It's the eccentric load that's the killer. I suspect Seth has probably put his 100s on the Orion parallelogram mounts sold by the planetarium and found it to have too high a settling time, if not difficultly in maintaining a firm clasp on heavier 100s in all positions. The UA cradle "U" mount design tries to solve the eccentricity problem for larger binos by holding the weight off to one side, but still close to the central post.
The other design solution is to simply make the whole thing beefier, as you do, Chuck.
Here's some photos of a beefier parallelogram bino mount that may interest you:
http://www.astro-tom.com/projects/binocular_mount.htm
- Kurt
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