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ETX TECHNICAL TIPS
Last updated: 20 March 2000
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ETX TECHNICAL TIPS |
I've mentioned the steel pier I have for my ETX in prior emails. But after seeing some of the other examples you've received I thought I'd share my crude but very effective design. This pier is my design and made by a welder friend out of scrap metal. It is a very effective design. Made out of steel vs. aluminum it's heavy enough to offset the ETX 125's weight and not make the whole setup feel top heavy, yet it's light and portable / handy enough to easily carry outside all assembled for a night of viewing. I'm attaching 4 pictures. The one labelled 
"pier" shows the whole setup. The "legs" picture shows how the legs are made as a right triangle from square tubing and flat bar. The 3 legs are bolted into threaded holes in the pipe. The braces also serve as a nice handhold to lift the whole assembly and walk it outside. Each leg also has an adjustable threaded pad for leveling. The "tray" picture shows an eyepiece tray. It has a threaded rod on the underside that slides into a small tube welded to the main pipe and which doubles as a handle when the pier is disassembled. The tray swivels side to side for convenience. The "mount" picture shows the pier's simple head assembly which is just two pieces of flat metal welded to the top of the main pipe, with a hole through which a bolt runs and holds the "tongue" you see welded to the plate on which the telescope base is bolted. This bolted tongue and grove assembly makes for a nice solid yet adjustable polar or even alt/az mounting. One can tighten the main bolt enough to hold the ETX125 from slipping in it's tilt angle but to make it yet more solid and not have to tighten it so much you can 
see I added a brace between the fixed part of the mount and the tilting part attached to the scope. It's made of two small bolts and a threaded rod coupler. Works great for my 45 degree latitude but the brace can adjust to quite a range ot latitudes. The plate bolted to the scope was custom made for my ETX90 but works perfectly with the ETX 125 without any modifications. This pier makes a very solid / rigid mount for the scope with a nice small footprint and is also quite portable.
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