Graeme

Shuttering is all finished, pipework is nearly there, I need one more 135° to kick the internet/camera/alarm pipe back to the shuttering. The pier support is looking a bit Heath Robinson! But the spirit level is happy with it. The blue tape is holding the pipe for the 12V and USB to the mount. 

As well as the 10mm rebar there's a 1m length of M25 threaded rod from the bottom of the block to the top of the pier. I'll make up a wood former for the 3 x M16 studs when the concrete gets poured. My good friend Tony is coming Wednesday with his concrete mixer and vibrating poker. 

8 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

I followed the disc brake method using the same parts listed in THIS THREAD.

My build thread is HERE and the only difference between my pier and the original is that I only used 3x 16mm threaded studs instead of 4. For drilling the holes, I used a neighbours pillar drill and it wasn't that difficult (as long as the drill is sharp!). 

I followed your build Martin and will be using a lot of your ideas! I'll be using 3 x 16 stud in the concrete pier with just the one brake disk on top. (Here) So my spare brake disc (they come in pairs) is still available to a good home of a diy observatory builder for a fiver, if you think you might need it Arnaud.

On 22/01/2023 at 17:20, Peter Reader said:

How much to post the brake disk to Oxford?

Well it's 300mm x 300mm x 75mm and weighs 5kg. Royal Mail want £4.35 for the postage.

Let me know if you want it and I'll PM you.

Looks like an effective solution.

1 hour ago, Peter Reader said:

Great build! How much to post the brake disk to Oxford?

Thanks Peter, it's going a bit slow in this cold weather! But I'm enjoying the build.

Dunno the price of postage, together they were £5.88 for the pair. I'll weigh the spare one and find out.

The brake disc arrived. Big thanks to my neighbour Tony for his drill stand! Three M16 threaded rod lengths fitted and ready to drop into the concrete in the pier. £90 for the Baader mount adapter, £2 for the brake disc from ebay! They come in pairs, so if anyone needs a brake disc, the other one is going for the price of the postage!

Moving on slowly! Excavations done. Shuttering done for the pier, The pipe is just to check the rebar for size, the actual pipe will be 1100mm tall. I'll be picking up the shuttering timber for the trench for the concrete under the side next to the fence on the way home from work tomorrow. Then all the concrete can be poured in one go. 

Coincidentally, I watched this video recently by the very excellent Cuiv. He doesn't answer the OP question with specific dB figures directly but he does discuss signal to noise ratio in detail. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgnH2WGTwBs

Regards

Graeme

Good luck with the concrete pour tomorrow.

I've been putting mine off till the weather warms a bit, partly for the concrete but partly for me!

20 hours ago, powerlord said:

I've seen some folk say give the edge of the base a chamfer, but I have no idea how to do that (it's level with the wooden box, and I can't take it off before its set), so I reckon I have to just miss that, and hope internal sealing of the shed base will be sufficient to keep any water pooling on the edge of the base from getting into the shed.

 

Our Civil Works lads put a chamfer on the edge of their concrete plinths by using a chamfer strip fixed to the top of shuttering prior to the concrete pour.

How to Make Chamfered Edge in Concrete - The Constructor

HTH

Regards

Graeme

2 hours ago, scotty38 said:

Just what I did with mine. I determined the time of meridian in the daytime and on a few sunny days marked the direction of the NCP on the concrete. I must have got it about right as my mount adjusters are pretty much centred.

Same as that!

I got the time of the Sun on the meridian at my location from Timeanddate.com

51 minutes ago, newbie alert said:

What size is your dug hole... I'm in Ashford so not a great distance from you... I remember doing my little scope house and I guarantee it's the best thing you can do, already setup and ready to roll

600mm cube. It seems to be the going rate. Your excvation looks massive! Is it finished?

Ground levelled some more. Redundant brickwork removed and old tree stump dug out. There was only 8" of that thing sticking out of the ground, I didn't realise it was so big! Had to pull it with a ratchet strap looped around the concrete fence post. The hose pipe feeds a tap at the end of the garden, It might be wise to take that out!

Rebar sections assembled, if the rain holds off tomorrow I'm hoping to get the shuttering finished. Then I just need the brake disk delivered and we will be ready for the concrete pour. Thought I might work out the pier height again before I cut the pipe and pour the concrete, that needs to be right!

That's a very neat pier adapter plate. 

Mine is a Baader mount adapter on top of an Ebay brake disc!

49 minutes ago, Swoop1 said:

Once again, my back is twinging after flashbacks having seen your pier base hole.

Very tidy excavation BTW👍

Thanks Swoop1

Your pier base thread excavation tidiness was one of my inspirations!

My excavation is not quite so tidy now, I left the fence post spike so as to not disturb the ground too much. But I've pulled it out now because it was in the way of the shuttering.

1 hour ago, adyj1 said:

Good luck with the build! 👍 

Cheers Adyj1

I'm looking forward to it!

It's a massive pain and I only tend to set up when there's a definite clear skies all night so the partials get missed. And my maximum exposure has only ever been 3 hours, so looking forward to multi-night captures of the same target.

Every imaging session starts with me carrying my CGX mount and tripod out of the garage, putting on the counterweights, fixing the telescope onto the mount, laying out the 12 volt and USB cables and connecting everything together. This takes at least 40 minutes and at the end of the session, in the early hours of the morning, everything has to be disconnected, dismantled and put away. The time is coming and it's probably not that far away when I will need to separate the mount from the tripod in order to lift them!

We have all heard this story before! So it's time for me to build a permanent setup. After a lot of research I have decided to build a back garden Roll off Roof Observatory. I've been off work for a few months so I've had time to read lots of roll off roof forum threads and think about a design. The initial plan was to build on this patio and use my CGX mount tripod.

But then a concrete pier seemed like a good idea. So the adjacent border was cleared and the location moved to include a good place to dig a 600mm x 600mm x 600mm hole in the ground for the pier base. 

The first half of the dig was quite easy. The second 300mm was heavy clay.

Next step, rebar and shuttering!

Regards

Graeme

That's excellent David.

Regards

Graeme

I bought a Baader CGX Mount Flange to go on top of my concrete pier (still in design stage (I'll start a DIY observatory build thread soon!))

The flange has an indent on the underside with two holes in it.

Anyone know what it's for?

Cheers

Graeme

On 14/09/2022 at 20:56, Budgie1 said:

.....the joys of having a permanent setup! I did a wee check on my setup times and from deciding it was a good night for imaging to starting the first exposure took 15 minutes the other night.  

Well that's incentive enough to start an observatory build!

This has been a great thread to follow. 

Thanks

Regards

Graeme

I've just installed CPWI Version 2.4.3 Beta 7 and connected my CGX to it.

There are two major updates:

The hand controller is no longer required for connection, you can plug the USB2 directly into the mount and the ASCOM drivers load no problem. I connected my CPWI focuser USB to my ASI camera hub USB. NINA seemed happy with the change.

Also, "Bug fix: ASCOM driver will now deliver the mount to the previously specified park position before parking the mount." The Set as Park now remembers the Alt Az coordinates allowing a Park location to be used. The old version ASCOM driver didn't differentiate between Home and Park. Very useful for wall mounted flat frame light panels and ROR observatories!

Please ignore if this is old news, it's new to me!

Regards

Graeme

Thanks Martin. I try not to be too heavy handed! But the bloated stars need sorting. I didn't use Starnet because when whilst it works well on the smaller stars when I've used it previously, the well bloated stars remain unaffected.

I might have another session on it with shorter exposures.

Graeme

Here's my go at NGC 6960 - The Western Veil Nebula, Caldwell 34, the Witches Broom Nebula. Part of the Veil Complex supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. Captured 21/08/22. 24 from 27 x 240 second exposures. Captured with NINA. Processed with PixInsight.

It needs a bit more processing to darken the background and bring out the colours more. But there's too much wrong with it to spend more time on it! 52 Cyg, is oversaturated (showing a slight collimation adjustment is needed) so I need to have another go with more data at a lower exposure. The poor composition is a result of expecting more nebulosity in the top left of the image and the shadow of the guiding mirror shows at the bottom of the image!

Regards

Graeme

On 29/03/2022 at 17:01, mikeDnight said:

I think B&Q or a local tool supply shop would have them in stock.

Screwfix do a good range of fixed castors.

My ROR is still in the design stage/wishful thinking stage/reading all the ROR threads stage. I'm still undecided on either rubber wheels on flat angle iron for quietness or metal V wheels on inverted angle iron for longevity. 

Do metal wheels make much noise?

Regards

Graeme