Dovetail upgrade for 150P

[Purplehayze104]

Hi All

din't know where to put this post maybe the mods will know a better location for it!!

just after some advice, as I have a 150P on an EQ3-2 have upgraded the legs to the EQ5 1.75" steel legs, I still get noticeable wobble when I'm trying to focus, maybe due to the mount just about coping,  was thinking would it be worth my while investing in a another dovetail as its still on the standard Skywatcher one would that help or ??? any other suggestions that would that help reduce it would be appreciated or should I just start the loooong process of saving for another mount.....!!

clear skies people

regards

john

[Roy Challen]

^{How noticeable is noticeable? Are you talking 2-3 seconds or around 10 seconds? If the former, and it still bothers you then there isn't much you can do other than buy a much heavier duty mount and stick it on a pier.  If its the latter, then I'm not really surprised but you can fill the legs with sand/gravel/concrete which makes a huge difference. I did this with my EQ3-2 tripod and the vibrations die away within 3.5 seconds, whereas with my steel legged (1.5") tripod it took around the 10 second mark! This is with a longer focal length telescope than you're using so I would expect some improvement at the very least.}

^{Hope that helps}

^Roy

[Purplehayze104]

well id say its probably less than 3 seconds but when attached to my laptop and trying to focus on a star as trying to learn a bit of astrophotography, just me touching the focusser causes the picture to shoot around the screen can be a bit frustrating, ive heard about the motorised focussers that can fit on but not sure how well they perform as thats a cheaper option than a new mount

[griz11]

I bought a JMI motofocus unit for my scope to solve that problem. If you have just started trying to focus while watching on a computer it will get better you will adapt to it over time. It is aggravating. I've seen it to some degree on every scope I've tried to focus. The motofocus helps a lot. He makes them for tons of different focusers. When I'm using the EF400 lens my mount is only about 1/3 of capacity and it still shakes a bit when you manually focus the lens. I put 10lbs of sand in the pier and that helped some the vibrations die out quicker. My last rig had several different densities of wood doughnuts that ran the length of the pier. It did an excellent job of damping out vibrations.

Griz