WO GT81 mounting

[buzz]

Just managed to grab one of the few remaining GT81's, serial 098! No chance of first light yet, since I have the obligatory 3 weeks of cloud cover.

I notice that the focus lock protrudes quite a bit and even with 90 mm mounting rings, the vixen mounting plate fouls. You can guess the issue, when I hang all the camera stuff on the end, I need to have the scope well forward, to get balance in the chuck.

Has anyone else got round this problem?

[pilkinn]

I had the same problem with my megrez 72. What I did was to add another dovetail bar between the scope's dovetail and the mount's saddle plate. This raised the scope and so the lock screw didn't foul. Not a perfect solution as it makes the screw hard to reach but I can't think of anything else.

[Deneb]

congrats on your new scope & have fun, it would be nice if WO gave that some extra thought about mounting tube rings on the ota...

[buzz]

Yes, you really have to remove the handle too. One thing I discovered, the grub screw for the tripod bush....will go all the way in and drop into the scope! Had to take off the focuser and fish it out

I think I will make some aluminium spacers, or rotate the focuser 45 degrees. At the end of the day, the scope is unlikely to be in the home position during operation anyway.

I saw a report that a full frame image from this scope looks like warp factor 8. As soon as I get clear skies, I will check it out with and without my WO flattener IV. I don't think it is optimised and hear there is another matched FF soon. I only have an H18, so I cannot test the extreme field of view.

As soon as I get things set up correctly, I'll post images.

I'll mail the designer of Dewbuster and tell him to up the power, so that I can burn the clouds away.