Making lemonade

Meet my Lemon Mark I: big aperture attached to a buzzy dec motor that intermittently ruins the views....

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After six months of trying to correct the buzzing, Lemon Mark II was born.

Never got the dec motor sorted, but mounting polar removes it from the tracking equation. Unfortunately, it also exposes the under-design of large mass-market forks -- no taper or thrust bearings on the RA axis equates to a jiggly polar mount with horrific dampening times.

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Jeff,
I would be very curious to know if this is a problem that is characteristic of all such Meade Mounts in this size or if you just had a defective one.
Dan

Jeff Young said:

Meet my Lemon Mark I: big aperture attached to a buzzy dec motor that intermittently ruins the views....

"Mark III: Lemonade" spent a few weeks mounted on the fork mount's "Bobbin". Lying on the floor to view at the zenith wasn't all that bad. But propping myself up on an elbow to view just off the zenith got old _real_ quick.

Enter 50" tall "Post", with a 10" diameter top plate (Bobbin was 32" tall, with a 16" diameter top plate). Bobbin weighed in at about 170 lbs and was a real bear getting up and down the stairs. Post tips the scales closer to 200 lbs!

Dampening time suffered a bit, going from 1/2 second to 1 second. Still, that's a long way off the 8 - 10 seconds for the polar-mounted fork.

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