ETX TECHNICAL TIPS Last updated: 31 January 2002

Tripod for ETX60

Sent:	Tuesday, January 29, 2002 21:09:07
From:	wschart@hot.rr.com (William Schart)
This fall I bought one of the Costco ETX60s, which were cheap but came
without a tripod.

At first I used it by placing it on a TV tray. This was somewhat OK, but
I was afraid that it was too easy to move the scope, blowing the
alignment. So a made an adaptor for a light weight photo tripod. This
was pretty shaky.

Now I happened to have a tripod, apparently from a ubiquitous 60mm
department store 60mm that a neighbor had tossed and I salvaged. I had
made a parallelogram bino mount with it. I decided to make this into a
tripod for my ETX.

I found that my making a bushing from a piece of plastic cut from a
kitty treat container, a 5/8" dowel would nicely fit in the hole on top
of the 'pod. I then cut a square piece of 2/x, and bored it part way
through to fit the round of top of the 'pod, and then through the rest
of the way 5/8" for the dowel. A 6" square of 1/4" plywood was cut to
fit on top of this to mount the scope of. These were glued together,
with a screw also used to fasten the end of the dowel to the plywood. A
couple of 1/4' holes in the plywood allow me to bolt the scope on.

The dowel extends down to the leg brace/ep tray and is also screwed
here. There is a finger bolt in the 'pod head, which I can loosen to
rotate the mount to point north, then tighten down to prevent the scope
from rotating further.

The legs can be adjusted for length and also to tune the level of the
mount. I leave the scope set up on this since I use it for quick viewing
sessions in addition to use as a travel scope.

It is now satisfactory steady. I can easily remove the ETX mount to
replace the bino mount.

William L. Schart

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