OK, I know the header picture has nothing to do with the title, but I like it. We are moving to that time of year, when the evenings are drawing in, getting dark earlier. For me, I have limited time for any kind of observation. I want those observations to be good and useful to me.
To be good a useful, I need a comfortable chair. I have given much thought to this. Up front, this is aimed at my doing naked eye or binocular viewing – definitely not telescopes. The chair needs to be right.
One particular thing to consider is the binocular mount. I almost bought one of these, a cantilever mount. But I suddenly realised there is a major problem; It looks perfect, but a what happens when I want to look at another part of the sky I have to move the chair and re-position everything, although it probably is the best mount. I think I need a different approach.
It seems to make sense to use one of these;
Good reclining angle, comfortable, good frame to which to clamp the binos. I need to think about the clamping system. One minor problem with this, if I want to look at a different part of the sky I have to re-arrange the chair.
What I really need is a chair that rotates. How about putting this chair on a rotating base? That would work – even better if I could motorise it – that would be excellent. Could I buy the base? Well I’ve looked, but I can’t find anything that comes near it. I have no idea how much it might cost, but I’m willing to bet it wouldn’t be cheap.
Could I make it? I honestly don’t think so. Two bases of wood, a central rotating thing, but I would also needs some additional support around the outer edge, a ring of bearings (what’s that called)? Way too complex for me. I get the cantering wrong, I am Murphy’s law writ large when it comes to DIY.
Then, a couple of nights ago, it suddenly hit me. How about one of these?
Now, it’s an indoor chair, so I would have to carry it out each time I want to use it. It reclines, so that would be good. It rotates which is good. It doesn’t have a framework which is easily accessible to secure the binos, perhaps I could create a mount that sits the binos across the arms, cushioned. They might not be as stable but we would have to test and adjust that. It could work. A bit more thinking needed – I think.
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