Pondoro

On 17/01/2022 at 15:15, bomberbaz said:

This is available from E bay, I have reviewed the provider in supplier/retailer reviews.

What I love about this, everything. First to picture one.

Here we see the mount on a skywatcher steel tripod with extension pillar and the bins it was bought for. Bins plus ep's weight is circa 5KG.

The mount is rated up to 15lb / 6.5kg. It manages my bins ok although there is a dampening mod which I will come to later and the counter weights used are iOptron as you need a 20mm bore with a 4.5kg and 1.35kg so total weight is a shade under 11kg.

The business end has extra movement in alt/az as can be seen in the picture below and the two handles help enormously when you are moving the bins around. Plus being rubberised they are very comfortable especially in the cold. 

I wanted one of these mounts as the freedoms of movement make it so easy to use and helps save neck strain when looking directly up to zenith

First mod I carried out was at the mount az washer. The bolt attaching to the mount swivel base runs through a bearing, the mount base plate, then a teflon washer before it screws into the mount swivel base. I had a slight problem with the bearing being rather sticky, a little lithium grease didn't make much difference so I contacted the vendor who sent me a new and improved bearing. Kudos to the vendor for his swift action.

Still a tad stiff even with the new washer so mod time, added a second washer to sandwich between mount base plate and supplied teflon washer. The second washer was made out of our old faithful plastic milk bottle.

So it runs Hex bolt through bearing, mount base plate, milk bottle washer, teflon washer and then the mount swivel base.

Now the movement is as smooth as silk so very happy with this simple but very effective mod.

 

Final mod was to try and damp vibration movement after moving the bins. The two parallelogram bars supporting the business end are channel bar with holes in I assume for weight reduction purposes. See top picture with cat posing for picture.

The top bar receives the counter balance bar during storage. The lower one is empty so I decided to try fixing some wood rail into it via the handy weight reduction holes with the aim of dampening some of the vibration. 

Initial findings appear positive but an out in the field testing will be more revealing hopefully.

If it proves good it will be bolted instead of screwed in place then sanded properly and painted black.

(no wood insert)

( wood insert fixed)

This is the end of my equipment review.

However I can confirm this has been used in the field and it performed like a dream.

I got stuck as to whether I should buy a cradle plus other options that I looked at. I am just so very glad I opted for a parallelogram. 

What is the seller’s name?

1 hour ago, Elp said:

Hello. Usually I find it's good to cross reference with a stellarium, like, well the app stellarium or sky safari. You quickly get to learn the naked eye visible constellations. Jupiter becomes incredibly easy to find by eye once you know what to look for (a largish, bright, yellow ball of light), it's distinctive and can't be erroneously mistaken for a star even when using your own eyes.

I can find Jupiter with my naked eye quite easily. But finding it in my 16x binoculars was tough. Likewise many stars. I assume 20x will be worse. 

I have just received (free) a pair of 80x20 binoculars. Celestion. I know I need something to support them. I own a pair of 56x16 that I use and love for birding, but when I have put them on a tripod and tried to look at Jupiter I had a terrible time finding it. 
 

So I need a safe support (I’m thinking parallelogram) but I also need advice, how do I find stuff?