Home made balancing kit for an SCT

[cfpendock]

Despite having a relatively expensive telescope (Celestron CPC1100), I am too mean to pay what I consider outrageous prices in order to balance it using proprietary balancing kits. So I have made my own for £4.28 plus some odds and ends and it works very well. It may be of interest to other people concerned about the cost of balancing an SCT so I have written a short illustrated article about the project. In case it of interest, I would like to upload the file here, but in what format and which part of the forum should this be?

Thanks

[JamesF]

I'd just stick it in a normal post in this thread.

James

[Gina]

Yes, good idea I'd be interested - I'm always interested in money saving ideas

[swamp thing]

I'd just stick it in a normal post in this thread.

James

That would be the normal thing to do.

[Carbon]

I've seen a few DIY counterweight set ups for the CPC's. I needed something very simple with parts I already had on hand so I came up with this temporary solution using a spare 50mm finder bracket attached at the front of the scope and a section of plumbing pipe filled with sand. A beer bottle fits perfectly in the finder bracket as well. I will eventually come up with a bit more elaborate set up. But for now this works quite well and my go to's seem to be a bit more accurate as there's less strain put on the motor. I don't do any AP, I'm strictly visual.

[cfpendock]

Well thanks everyone. I've tried it here but it seems impossible to insert images, so I have put abbreviated text into my album as descriptions for the figures.

[cfpendock]

By the way, Carbon, how exactly did you upload for pic??????

[Carbon]

cfpendock....thanks for posting those step by step images. I plan on using a T-track too. They sell short sections of T- tracks at local DIY centers here.

I upload images directly from my documents or picture file I keep on my PC. When you reply go to reply options, add attachments, and click on 'choose file' and that should open up your documents or picture file in your PC.

[cfpendock]

Thanks very much Carbon. So this post is almost by way of an experiment. it will be interesting to see if tracking is improved (when we get the weather), although I always found the most critical was getting the mount precisely level - normally tracking was OK. Certainly it was good enough for visual, and like yourself, I am generally a visual observer - there is something quite magical when what you are looking for floats into view - and except for very faint objects, I find the CPC 1100 exceptionally good for that. So here is the home forge.....

Hey, it works! Thanks