telescope to go

The Telescope Mover (see Telescope Mover.jpg at right) is a modified Home Depot hand truck. I attached a 2x4 across the bottom and drilled holes to accept two of the tripod legs. Near the top I added a piece of 3/4" plywood notched to capture the top of the tripod legs just below the accessory tray. The tripod is set in the holes and tilted back into the notches and a bungee cord is used to secure it for transport. The handle and ends of the 2X4 are painted light gray so I won't trip over them in the dark (again). The telescope is shown with its Orion solar filter attached. Also shown are the 6X30 RA finder with solar filter attached.
The Battery Box (Battery Box.jpg) is an old Igloo Lunchbox containing two 12-volt gel cell batteries wired in parallel. I designed a small circuit board with a 6-volt regulator and a battery level monitoring circuit which is mounted into a cutout in the side of the box. The box has 12V (large jack) output for the dew heater circuit and 6V (small jack) output for the RA drive motor and an LED bar graph battery voltage indicator. A switch (to the left of the LED bar graph in the photo) is used to turn the bar graph off when not needed to conserve power. The Battery Box is secured to the bottom of the hand truck with a combination of Velcro and a bungee cord. The battery charger is plugged into the 12V port for charging and stored inside the box when not needed.
The finder scope solar filter is built from an 1" PVC pipe coupling hollowed out to be a tight fit on my 6X30 Right Angle finder and secured with three 6-32 Nylon thumb screws from Scope Stuff. A small piece of Bader Solar Film is attached to the front of the PVC with double sided tape and covered with a layer of black electrical tape for added strength.
The Dew Heater contains a circuit that monitors the temperature sensors for the OTA and the ambient air. The circuit is designed to keep the OTA corrector lens, finder, and eyepiece at a user-selectable temperature above ambient. In use the heater is set for about 3-5 degrees above ambient and increased as needed during heavy dew conditions. The circuit will cycle on and off as needed to maintain the set temperature. Turning the temperature all the way up will force the circuit on full to burn off any dew that accumulates. The temperature should then be set back to a few degrees higher than the original setting to keep more dew from forming. The tripod platform shown in this picture was my previous transport idea which proved to be somewhat heavy and was scrapped for the current setup.