Lazy Susan mod

[Dreadz]

Ok. I know its not ground breaking or original but thought I'd share it anyway.

Got annoyed with the sticky az bearing last night trying to keep Jupiter in view so decided, with cloud forecast for tonight and clear skies tomorrow, it was time to actually get round to installing the lazy susan thats been sat in the box for weeks now.

Searched around on my lunch break for some teflon pads and an m14 bolt but no joy

Had kind of given up but on the off chance looked in Wilkinsons when I finished work, no m14 bolts but found some peculiarly named skid pads. They look and feel like compressed wool and are self adhesive and at 25p for 9 pads thought they had to be worth a punt. Put 2 (1 on top of the other) directly onto the teflon pads already on the base and reassembled it (minus the washers due to the bolt being that bit too short to accommodate the extra thickness of the bearing) and gave it a turn. Happy days! Feels smooth as silk. Easy to move but enough resistance and no sticktion. Bring on the clear skies (and an m14 bolt!)

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[JamesF]

You can buy that pad material in small sheets to cut to a suitable size, too.  I used some to line the "scope rings" I used with my modded PST.

James

[michaeldurban]

I tried everything on my dob..

from milks washers to cd's..

even put a new laminate ring around the dobs base where the

teflon pads glide...no success..

Even tried teflon pads (blue ones)..

I couldn't get it right..

Took the whole thing apart and bought a lazy susan..

now it is perfect, also put in an adjustable setting circle..

at least then you don't have to find north before you start watching..

[Dreadz]

Was planning on doing the setting circle/wixey combo on mine too but thought I'd try skeye pro first seeing as I already had it installed on my phone.

Cable tied my phone to side of spotting scope, got jupiter lined up and recalibrated skeye, started slewing and bingo m and ngc objects start appearing in view even in my lp plagued garden.

Its not perfect, you do need to keep adding alignments to improve accuracy but have found more in my last 2 sessions than I had in the few months previous

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

[michaeldurban]

I tried Skeye too and found it woefully inadequate..

the display jitters and jumps, even after forty-twelve star alignments.

Funny thing is... I discovered my Galaxy S4 has a built-inn function through which

you can communicate with other people by simply holding it to your ear

and speaking aloud, some sort of wireless communication device...

(I call it WCD for short..)

think I will start using that function more often, not many people know about it..

[knobby]

My HTC one x does that too :-) great find...