Fitting a meade 5000 80mm to NEQ6

[stevebrig]

Hi,

I would very much appreciate some help on this. I recently bought a Meade 5000 80mm refractor and the L-style shoe bracket that is fitted to the scope is not compatible with the vixen saddle that I have. I have also tried to mount a vixen dovetail beneath the shoe but it is not very stable.

Has anybody had a similar problem?

Any help appreciated.

Cheers

[BlueAstra]

Yes I had the same problem. However I bolted a long SW dovetail to the bottom of the L fixing with four bolts. It seems quite stable. Also fitted a spur at one end to mount a red dot finder.

[themos]

I just took a hacksaw to the shoe and took off a little bit so that square-profile is more trapezoidal like.

[BlueAstra]

What is the native dovetail compatible with?

[Merlin66]

Camera tripod? For the 1/4" bolt fitting??

Why not cut your losses and use a set of rings and a longer vixen dovetail?

[ampleamp]

I removed the shoe completely as I found it to be inherently unstable. I went for the tube ring option as this works the best for me.

The rings were cheap as chips (90mm from memory) and they can easily be bolted to the dovetail of your choice.

[stevebrig]

Hi All,

Thank you for you replies. I think the tube ring option seems the one to go with though I do have a further question. On this scope the tube is rotatable instead of the focuser ( I think this is useful for astrophotography) but tube rings will mean that it cannot be rotated. Would this be a problem?

On the option discussed I have tried to fit another dovetail below the current one but there are only two holes to bolt into which are very close together and it did not look very stable.

Cheers

Steve