Mobile Scope Carrier

I have recently suffered a back injury that looks like my limmit to carrying things will be 25 lb. I currently use a Celestron 11 GPS scope and now I can not carry it. Being an engineer I have put my mind to work and not willing to give up the large scope, I have come up with the following idea:

I am going to take all the parts from an electric wheelchair and build a rectangular frame to hold the three wheels per side. They will be driven by the electrics from the wheelchair.

The frame will be 12 inches thick and house the batteries and all other components below the deck. Four outriggers will swing out with jacks at the ends to level and steady the entire unit in position.

A central pier will be mounted in the center of the frame to hold my scope, wedge, and other optic parts. A sleeve at the base of the column will be able to rotate around the pier mounted to this will be an adjustable height seat which holds my laptop computers on the armrests.

Because the unit will have 4 51AH batteries I could walk alongside the entire unit for about 30 or 35 miles if I wanted to. ( The remote control is wired and carried in my hand )

With a small trailer to put the unit in, it will still allow me to go to all the star parties that I want.

Has anyone seen anybody working on something like this ?

Or does anyone see any unsurmountable obsticals to building something like this ?

I really want to make the unit narrow enough to fit through a doorway so I can run the unit in and out of the house.

Sure would make setup easy

Never seen anything like that.
Sounds cool!
Give us pictures when its finished.
Floyd

I've known several folks in electric wheelchairs and that seems like a very $$ answer to your problem (new full size wheelchairs run about 6K dollars last time I looked). Are you thinking of a full blown wheelchair or one of the motorized "scoot about" chairs that I see at assisted living centers all the time?

I would be careful - many electric wheelchairs can go FAST (10 MPH+)!! And you will be raising the center of gravity on that "system" (esp. if it is narrow enough to get through doorways) with a tall scope and accessories. You might want to either redo the motor to wheel gear ratios or put some kind of limiter on the motor control. Many wheelchairs do have limiters but they are east to get at (and hence easy to "bump into" and reset) but if you convert to a hand controller you probably already have that covered.

One other option you might consider: Maybe get a small light duty one man hand steered electric pallet lift like they use in warehouses? Might be narrow enough for your needs. It kind of looks like a two-forked car floor jack with an attitude but it's motorized for both moving and lifting while you steer with the handle. This could not only allow you to move the scope, but most have about 8 to 12 inches of vertical lift built in so you can raise and lower the whole telescope with a flip of a switch. Just mount a good sturdy base between the arms where the pallet would be and setup the mount/OTA to that. Of course the rollers might not work on grass, etc. But I bet you could find one at a reasonable price if you looked around on the net at industrial supply places.

My $0.02 - TM