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This is a slight enhancement on a design by Erik Willcox as found on
Andy's Shot Glass. With a Newtonian reflector mounted on an German Equatorial Mount, all too often it seems the eyepiece ends up in inconvenient locations (under the OTA, on the top where you need a stool, etc). Erik Willcox came up with an inexpensive solution to this problem: Willcox Rings. I took Erik's design a little further, using flexible 1/2" plastic pipe for the ring, and after some experimentation, reduced it to ONE ring only (on the aperture end), since the second ring serves no useful purpose so long as the scope remains level or is pointed skyward. The second thing that I added were 8 teflon furniture sliders, fastened to the INSIDE of the Willcox ring with self-adhesive pads. This reduced friction significantly and resulted in a very easy to move OTA once the main rings were loosened off about 2 turns. |