Hey! You gotta do something on these cloudy nights.

The first modification I made was to eliminate the need for tools every time the counter weight is attached or moved. This was a real pain in the butt to get a screwdriver to loosen the safety screw on the end of the shaft, then use a Allen wrench to loosen the weight which seems to made out of neutron star material. The position of the set screw made this even worse because you could only get a small part of a turn on it. Also the set screw leaves some pretty ugly nicks in the shaft. I drilled a hole from the outside to the inside of the weight and tapped it for a 3/8" course thread. I then made a spacer that would fit in the hole and brazed a small bead on the end that contacts the shaft. The screw was made out of a section of 3/8" threaded rod with a wooden knob threaded and epoxied to the end. The safety screw was modified by brazing a flat piece of metal in the slot to permit tightening it by hand. This now allows the counter weight to be attached without tools, and has the added benefit of not marking up the shaft due to the soft brass tip on the spacer.

The second thing to get changed on this scope were the bands that hold the tube to the mount. These straps were a real bitch to tighten, it felt like my fingers were going to bleed after a few times of repositioning the tube. But the worst part about them is when you are trying to attach or remove the tube, you have to hold it in place while they are bouncing back and forth like a couple of snakes that are going for your eyes. They were replaced with a hinged fiberglass shell that I constructed, I first wrapped the tube with mylar to protect it, then laid the fiberglass cloth right over the mylar and poured resin on the cloth and worked out all the bubbles with rubber glove covered hands. Four layers of 16oz. cloth (pre-cut to the approximate size) were used. The result is about 1/8 inch thick. Each of the two sections were made one at a time, slightly larger than needed then cut to size after they set up. A continuous type hinge was epoxied and screwed to the two halves. A 1 inch X 1/8 inch thick aluminum angle was attached to each of the open ends with screws and epoxy. The screws were all ground flush. 2" strips of felt were then glued to the insides with contact cement. Two 2" X 1/4 ,20 screws were put through the top half aluminum angle with nuts to hold them in place. The whole thing was then screwed to the top of the mount with 6x32 1/2" screws countersunk into the fiberglass. I really wanted to make this out of aluminum tube, I checked several places around town and a lot of them had the tube but only sold it in 20 foot lenghts. Since this would be enough for about 30 of these clamps I decided to go with fiberglass. Total cost for fiberglass, resin, hinge & other hardware were about $35.

So, after all this, how does it work? Setting up the scope is now much easier, just open the top and set the tube in, it will now set there without needing to be held because it is cradled by the lower half of the shell. Close the top and with one hand squeeze the aluminum angles together and spin the knurled nuts up until they are snug. You don't need to really crank on them like you did with the original bands. It holds the tube in place much better, and does not tend to let it slip back when it is pointed straight up. Repositioning the tube is now a snap, just squeeze the angles and spin the nuts down a ways, rotate the tube to where you want it and retighten.

The following is more of an addition than a modification. Having gotten used to a scope that had an accessory tray between the tripod legs, I really missed it with the Starfinder. I made this simple one that slides right over the top of the pedestal. It holds my eyepieces and barlow lens, and rarely gets in the way. It is made out of a piece of 1/4 plywood, the edges of the cutout slot are beveled to clear ( slide under) the screws and washers that hold the mount latitude adjustment.*

*The cheap buttonhead socket screws that Meade includes stripped the heads when I try to tighten them enough to prevent slippage and were replaced with high quality conventional socket head screws.

Balancing the scope used to require removing the 5 screws holding the drive cover on and loosening the clutch screws, after doing this several times before getting it just right I decided that there has to be a better way. I obtained an ABS (black plastic) pipe fitting 2 1/2" inside diameter threaded for a cleanout plug. I cut it down so that only the threaded portion was left. This was then super glued to the center of the drive cover. The drive cover inside of the fitting was cut out with a Dremel tool. Now the clutch screws can be accessed by spinning off the cleanout plug from this fitting, much easier than removing the 5 screws and the whole cover. This access hole also helps when removing the batteries from the drive as they are a real tight fit. I noticed that the battery box within the drive cover was designed for a 9 volt battery, then modified ( the back cut out) to allow sliding in the battery pack with the six AA batteries.

One other addition was a small round bubble level, this was purchased at Builders Square, about $4. I made a bracket and attached it to the pier with a longer screw at one of the holes that hold the mount to the top of the pipe. Then mounted the level to the bracket. An alternative to this would be a level that is made for setting fence posts that can be attached to the pipe. They sell for about $10. I carry three of four little circles of 1/4" plywood to put under the feet to level everything. This greatly enhances polar alignment.

I also made a couple of end covers for the tube. These are pretty simple, kind of like a shower cap. The material I used is nylon like they make tents and waterproof bags out of. Just about any cloth store should have it in any color you like. One side seems to be coated and it is almost airtight. I just cut out a circle about 1" bigger than the tube then sewed a strip about 3 1/2" wide to the circle, leaving about a 1/2" outside of the seam. Then I folded and sewed the outside edge over to leave a 3/4" channel all the way around the strip. Then threaded a piece of 3/4" wide elastic through the channel and sewed up the ends. They look better than the ones I've seen in catalogs and the total cost was about $3.

Tip: The store where I bought the material, also had a long flexible plastic needle that is used to thread drawstrings through hoods and whatever. This was used to do the elastic. It cost $2.

All of these things have made the scope much more user friendly. User friendly? Maybe I've spent too much time around computers. But really the cost for everything was under $50 & I still have leftovers of several things. I would have been willing to spend twice that if the scope had all these features when it was purchased. Well I hope somebody else can get some use out of all this.

See ya all later

Bert

My next project is going to be a piggyback camera mount. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

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