Mounting ideas for binos and scope

From: Ioannis (morpheus_at_olympus.mons)
Date: 07/01/04 

Date: Thu, 01 Jul 2004 20:54:12 +0300

For some reason I was confident, around 7 months ago when I ordered my
20x100 binoculars that mounting them would be easy.

The results are almost catastrophic. I had an engineer built a "T"
bracket, which screws on top of my professional Chinon tripod. "T"s head
contains holder rings, which nicely accept my Tasco. "T"s bottom
contains a hole which accepts a butterfly screw that goes under the
20x100. I have arranged for the difference in weight, so all is well in
terms of design.

As it turns out, although correct, the entire system is dysfunctional.
The tripod's altitude and azimuth controls, although robust, become
extremely hard to control, when the viewing angle is ~40-45 degrees
above the horizontal. The rotation of the tripod head causes the
rotation of the support bracket T and as a result, the center of mass
moves off approximately 10-12cms away from the tripod head.

The total weight of the system head being around 9 lb., it becomes a
Herculean task to rotate the head without some serious effort, when the
angle is large.

Does anybody know of an alternative patent that would minimize
displacement of the center of mass on my system? The way I understand
it, rectangular brackets won't be much of an improvement, but I am not
100% sure.

I am of course interested in keeping the two optical systems aligned,
that's why all the fuss. The Tasco and the binos point at the same point.

What about adding counterweights on the head? Seems to be the reasonable
solution.

Ideas welcome, and thanks in advance, 

-- 
I. N. Galidakis
http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/jgal/
------------------------------------------
"The best way to predict reality, is to know exactly what you _don't_ want".
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