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wont let me DM you, if you could ask him. what i would need is a disc 250mm x30ish mm with 4 x 20mm holes, 3 x 18mm holes and 1 x 12mm. as a option depending on price rounding the edge would be nice too.  Will do - Keep and eye on your notifications and I will try PM-ing you back. Of course you would ultimately need to send some locaitons if you went ahead - but the above is enough for the moment

If you do draw a blank and want to do something by post I expect my Bro could sort you out in his workshop - he does small one off jobs for folks - he might even be able to save you cash on the aluminium disk. PM me if you get stuck.

Oh, dear - the shame of it! That's how I've done a lot of it recently . My parents used to have some old strainers that were used for single line wires that they used to put on the end of just the top and sometimes the bottom strand of long lengths of stock fence and nail to the posts once it was all tight, but I didn't know where they were and so I bought a Draper fence tensioner like this one https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Draper-Fence-Wire-Tensioner-Strainer-Tensioning-Tool-Barbed-Fencing-57547/112824311655?epid=23021931502&hash=item1a44da5f67:g:E4IAAOSw87Ray1SS That gadget appears to work on a post by post basis (or at maybe at most two or three at a time as it doesn't have space to take up a lot of slack). The trouble is as you tension on each strand of the stock fence - top, middle and bottom it is possible to get all the tensions different and it doesn't go up uniformly and the individual posts can move., and you quickly end up with big bows in the wire. I knew there had to be an easier way and discovered videos showing people putting them up with brackets that run along the full length of the end the length of stock fence (as I described above) and pulled up with a winch or a 4x4 car (which I don't have and can't get to where I need it anyway). On the basis of my last experiment with just the bracket this does seem the way to go - hence the new kit. It's just a pity that I've already done loads of lengths with the old post by post method before finding englightenment.

Just in case anyone had been intrigued - Today I finished off the collection with the arrival of a 1.5 tonne set of 2 leg 'Brothers' engineering chains! It isn't actually all for a bicarb powered rocket bike (though I did laugh loudly at the idea!) The engineering stuff is to help me pull up all my stock fence tight so that I can then nail it onto the posts (Bro made me a fence attachment to pull against too). We had a dry run with just the puller and my son on the end of it and locked it off with rope against a tree and it def. made things easier, but I also realised that the limitation was in how much we could manually pull the fence puller and how close I could get a tree and how tight I could lock off a rope. Thus, I now have a portable set-up and it should all be strong enough - I didn't want something that was suddenly going to go twang! Thus, I now have a set-up which runs - fence puller along length of stock fence. The Brothers on each end (effectively top and bottom of the puller). A free swinging link running along the length of the chain to keep the tension centred, then connecting to the winch and the land anchor behind the winch to provide the portable solid surface to pull against. So it will be bash in all the posts and run out the stock fence. Cut it to the approx. right length then attach the 'engineering solution'. Heave with the winch and stand the fence up along the posts - then put in the staples and it should work without pulling out any of the individual posts because you won't have to tension specifically against any of them, which is what currently happens. In theory (once the posts are up) it even becomes a one person job. Or at least that's the cunning plan Baldrick! If anyone doubts that it sounds workable or there is anything else to consider please let me know. I know lots of you are engineering types as you build all sorts of astro things like observatories. I can't design and build a electronic observatory, but I reckon I might have found an easier solution to putting up stock fence. I developed the idea from some youtube videos and it's kind of a cross over between them.

I knew it was something special when I saw it. I like looking at photos of everyone's kit in the various threads and the moment I saw the photo above I could tell that it wasn't a usual 'run of the mill' telescope. I've also learned about Horace Dall from the internet so many thanks for enlightening me

Is it me or is that a stonking telescope in the picture above, it must be all of 8 foot long, the focal length must be huge. Is it for something special like the planets?

Follow the Astrobaby guide linked to above - do absolutely every step as it is written no matter how odd it might seem and you will get it perfect. FWIW I bought a laser, decided it was un-necessarily complicated and got a Cheshire - then I followed the Astrobaby guide and its just a brilliant combination. I can't recommend a Cheshire and the Astrobaby guide highly enough.

Oh yes, and leave that Barlow! in the barrow for most of the time! Certainly don't try it with the 4mm as I think that is a recipe for disaster - you might get away with it with the 12mm. Its 600mm f/l so that will give x50 @12mm; x150 @ 4mm and x100 @ 6mm. It says online that the maximum practical magnification is about 50-60 times per inch of aperture the 60 times end of that only being useful for things like double stars - you have about 2.3" 2..3x50 = x115. That suggests that your 12mm EP and then 12mm with the x2 Barlow will be about the only useable things in the box! However, as you are doing the 12mm by itself is probably your best bet.

This sounds like an issue if the finder is a magnified one. If you use a non-magnified finder like my Celestron RDF or something like a Telrad which seem very popular on SGL then you should not be able to see more stars through the finder than you can see with your eye. My RACI is a magnified finder and I've some idea of what you are describing - I've had that problem too - often with Polaris of all things - it is not a particularly bright star, but it does have one quality that you can see on a decently clear night with a high enough magnification EP - it is a double star. As noted above if you can pick from the offered list on the goto list something with a specific quality to it - maybe a particular colour or the fact that it is a double star then this will make it more obvious when you land on the right place. Some folks above are assuming that the automatic device will actually turn to the correct place straight away if the system is started correctly and therefore you can assume that the star selected is correct. However, my own experience with my goto system is that there are a myriad of reasons why it doesn't find the stars first time and I frequently have to manually correct the selected star location before proceeding. Thus, I agree with the OP you DO need to be able to spot where you should be. @winniewsp you will find in many cases that, if you are going for the brightest star configuration, in many cases, even in a magnified finderscope, the multiple stars presented will still all look a bit different and it should still be the brightest one that you are aiming for, but the best advice might be to try a non-magnified finder like a Celestron RDF or Telrad and make sure it is spot-on aligned with the EP centre during the daytime, then when your selection is selected in the centre of the RDF or Telrad (which is a form of RDF) it WILL be the star in the centre of the EP. Don't forget to check the alignment each time you use it too.

Mind you even when you know which star you are after it can still be difficult to find it by waving about with the finder-scope - this was as much my problem as knowing which star I needed to aim at in the first place. My cheap solution was to add to the existing finding scope. A RACI finder rather than my supplied straight through one, a dual mount (cheaply 3D printed from the popular auction site from a guy in Poland!) and a el cheapo Celestron RDF soon sorted me out - I have the two finders more or less aligned with the RACI spot on with the EP. I land on the star with the RDF - that puts it into the RACI - which I then and therefore into the EP view. This is my set-up

You sound as though you need a map of the sky so that you can find the stars that the finding device names. Many free applications exist. Stellarium is available on a PC and there is a mobile phone version which I use, and lots of other planetarium apps are available on the mobile phone - if you have GPS some even try to track the sky and show on the screen what the the phone is being held up in front of, you can even buy a hand-held cardboard planetarium for your location and that will show the sky at different times in the year. It is difficult to know whether the system has found the correct star (esp. the first one unless you know what it is and, like me, you will need a guide until you learn your way around. It is also worth closely following your instructions to see if you need to start off the process with your telescope facing celestial North and horizontal - I find this helps on the system that I use.

And yet if the exit pupil is only 8mm that in theory means that in such a large expanse of glass you can only really use a 8mm diameter and have to be right over the top of that. I can't fault the trigonometry, but it still seems a bit nuts!

I thought it was Villa, but it may have been both of them. I hadn't heard that!

@Orac you didn't disappoint me, I thought 'Orac' surely not someone else who remembers Orac, but your Avatar proves you do. As a child I can remember recording the sound of him shrinking on one episode when they wanted to smuggle him into a gambling institution I kept the sound on a cassette tape for a long time. B7 forever!!