No observatory woes

[arkturas]

Hi, all -

Those of us that aren’t preparing for an evening observing due to cloud cover I hope are browsing the forum, or at least pondering some way to achieve near perfect alignment, or perhaps are drawing up a wish list of what to do if they had £15K to spend on astro-equipment.

I just wanted to know: those of us that don’t have an observatory do with their equipment pre-post viewing/imaging session.

what I really want is an easy way to access equipment without giving myself a hernia - I cant be the only one fed up with ferrying stuff in an out of the house trying to avoid the dog who thinks what you’re doing is just the most exciting thing ever!.

PS if you have pics of solutions that you’ve seen or you use – please don’t be afraid to show them - or if you allready have an observatory and just wish to make the rest of us green-eyed those images are welcome too.

[mike.brightmore]

I got a set of JMI wheeley bars so I could leave the scope fully assembled and just push it in and out of the garage. Got mine from Rother Valley Optics and they really made life easier. You can get big wheels for rough terrain.

[adamsp123]

I did this..

http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-observatories/84335-what-lies-beneath.html

So I have mount ready to go, just add telescope and bits and I am ready in about 10 mins of starting the set up.

No polar aligning, no humping the mount out, it really made a big difference!

BTW You can get a pier mount for a EQ6

[Catanonia]

Check my website in my link for a cheapo DIY observatory. Cost me about £300 all in and is fantastic. Last night whilst chatting with Keith I shut down when clouds played an end to the game in about 1 minute.

Park scope, roll roof and switch off. Done in 1 minute.

[Reggie]

At my last address I had a slab of concrete laid about 3-4ft from the back door, I left the scopes setup on the mount, so it was just a simple case of dropping the lot out about an hour before the session to let everything cool down.

If it rained I had the choice of capping the scopes/EPs and putting a barbeque cover over the rig or unpluggng the appropriate cables and take the whole shebang inside, either solution would mean the kit was safe in 60seconds.

I avoided the hernia by removing one or both counterweights before lifting