Horizon 8115 Tripod

[RobertI]

Horizon 8115 Tripod

I bought the Horizon tripod as a light weight ‘grab and go’ mount to go with my Megrez72. Typical retail is about £80. I have a Skytee 2 heavy duty alt-az which is brilliant for visual – it can carry two very heavy scopes, is simple to set up and take down, BUT it is heavy and not something I want to carry for more than a few hundred yards. So being without a garden at present and having to walk to my local park for the best views, I was looking for something really lightweight and able to carry up to 3.5 kg, which is about the weight of the Megrez72 plus two inch diagonal and Baader Hyperion eyepiece.

When it arrived I was surprised how robust and pleasingly chunky it felt – not your normal camera tripod at all. Testing in the garage looked promising, the legs extend the tripod head to around the height of my chin (I am 5’ 8”) and the central column can be wound up with a winding handle to well above the top of my head. The altitude and azimuth axes each have a knob to adjust the tension and a separate knob to lock the axes. The adaptor fits to the scope via a standard camera bolt and then attaches to the tripod head’s shoe by ‘slotting in’ then securing in place with a lever. Much better than other tripod fittings I have seen and completely secure.  

The pan/tilt handle can be removed and reset to various angles and adjusting the handle to one side means the scope can point directly at the zenith without the handle hitting the tripod.

I finally got the opportunity to use the tripod for an observing session. You can find my report of the night’s observing here. Using the Megrez 72 with a 10mm eyepiece gave a magnification of 43x. The tripod was more than capable of dealing with this and gave excellent steady views of a varkiety of clusters. The scope was easy to pan and tilt, but the higher I got to the zenith the more difficult it became to point the scope. The primary reason being that the centre of gravity of the scope sits several inches above the fulcrum of the tripod head. Fine when the scope is pointing low to the horizon and the scope is directly over the fulcrum, but increasingly problematic as you look at objects at higher angle of elevation, creating increasing leverage on the fulcrum and requiring the tension and locking nut to be wound on tight to prevent slippage. Beyond a certain angle of elevation the only way I could get the red dot finder to settle in the object was to ‘go beyond’ the object using the pan/tilt handle, tighten the altitude nut, release the pan/tilt handle and then let the red dot settle into place on the object. This required some trial and error and was a pain when viewing overhead. At anything over 50x magnification I think this would be almost impossible. Next time I would plan my session to exclude any objects higher than around 60 – 70 degrees elevation.

However I found a brilliant website which describes a cheap and easy modification which removes this problem. I shall definitely be trying this.

A big plus was that extending and locking central column allowed the eyepiece to be at eye level when pointing at the zenith and without much loss of stability. This means no bending down to reach the eyepiece or having to carry an observing chair. This is a big plus over other more expensive mounts in my opinion.

So in summary this is a very good grab and go mount, well worth the £80. Best for lightweight, compact scopes at low powers up to around 40x and best used well away from the zenith.

With the modification described, this could be the perfect budget grab and go mount!

[RobertI]

Addendum to the above - I think the tripod can handle well in excess of 40x magnification in terms of steadiness, possibly up to 100x, the issue is the pointing accurcacy using the pan and tilt. As described, the higher the angle of elevation the bigger the problem becomes requiring lower powers to be used to find the object easily.

[MattJenko]

Nice thorough review, must do more observing !!!

[RobertI]

Cheers Matt. Let me know when you do, I really fancy having a look through that 10" Dob of yours.

[MAN or ASTROMAN]

Excellent review Roberti-I also enjoyed your observing report when I read it yesterday!

[RobertI]

Excellent review Roberti-I also enjoyed your observing report when I read it yesterday!

Thanks! It's great to know they are appreciated. 

[RobertI]

For those interested I have now modded this tripod - see my post in the DIY Astronomer forum

[jonathan]

Thinking about treating myself to a decent tripod for camera and binocular use, though £200 on something like this is way over what I wanted to spend (doesn't even come with a head).  At the moment I have a very old looking thing, think it may be German, probably from the 1980s, square section alloy legs with detachable central column monopole (probably only ever used that feature twice though).  Would you say the Horizon 8115 is a good upgrade?  I'm not planning on attaching a scope, although may be tempted to try my Lunt LS60 on it (usually it goes on my Omni CG-4); the upgrade you did may be the way to do that.

Would this be suitable for video use as well or would that require something much more expensive / different?  I have looked at video tripods (with head) before but anything at sensible money just felt rubbish.

[RobertI]

Hi Jonathan,

I am still using the tripod and very pleased with it. I am not a camera tripod expert so i really cannot say how it compares to others, some people say the head is not so good, I'm not sure where it falls down in this repect, for me it is fine especially as with the modification i did the altitude axis is always balanced so the head and the tension knobs are never really tested.

I believe it should be able to handle heavy cameras and binos for terrestrial use, obviously its when you point skyward that the weigt becomes a problem, but with standard binoculars should not be an issue.

The tripod can extend to be tall especially with the centre column extended so i would have thought should be good for binoculars.

Any help?

Rob

[JemC]

Thinking about treating myself to a decent tripod for camera and binocular use, though £200 on something like this is way over what I wanted to spend (doesn't even come with a head).  At the moment I have a very old looking thing, think it may be German, probably from the 1980s, square section alloy legs with detachable central column monopole (probably only ever used that feature twice though).  Would you say the Horizon 8115 is a good upgrade?  I'm not planning on attaching a scope, although may be tempted to try my Lunt LS60 on it (usually it goes on my Omni CG-4); the upgrade you did may be the way to do that.

Would this be suitable for video use as well or would that require something much more expensive / different?  I have looked at video tripods (with head) before but anything at sensible money just felt rubbish.

Jonathan

have you had a look at these, they are basically the same tripod but with different price tags,

i recently purchased the Ravelli APGL4, it is a very capable tripod and to be honest the best one i have ever owned, more than capable for camera/binocular use, very sturdy and robust and also looks very nice,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics-Tripod-Pistol-Inches-Adjustable/dp/B00CF1LS94/ref=pd_sim_ph_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=04PZFY6AAVVP0RRP3V09

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ravelli-APGL4-Professional-Tripod-Adjustable/dp/B003SQEAY0

Regards

[Paz]

I've got a Horizon 8115 and I think it is very solid and practical and packs down to a small size.  All of the adjustments have tension controllers as well as locking, and are located in places it is easy to find and adjust in the dark.

It looks like it can safely take a lot of weight - I've tried resting 10kg of weight on it to see how strong the tensioner and locking on the extension pole is and everything seemed fine. That's more weight than I would leave on it but it was useful to know.

[Dinoboy]

Hi I have a Horizon 8115 and have not put a scope on it only bins. The reason I have not tried a scope is because I have no idea on how to attach one. Any help, pics would really be useful. Thanks in advance.

[happy-kat]

This is an idea

Link here