Just browsing the forums and thought I'd post a photo of our scope. We (Dale Asbury and Myself) spent 5-7 years (depending on how you look at it) building this 12.5" f/20 Tri-schief. We set out to do something with the design that, to the best of our knowledge, no one else had done. We decided to close the tube with an optical window. If anyone else out there has built a closed tube design, I'd like to hear about it. We installed Tech 2000's Dob Driver II but we integrated the azimuth drive into one of the foot pads of the ground board instead of the bottom of the rocker box. This provides rock solid support no matter where the scope is pointed. The white dots on the tube are stars, all with their correct positions and magnitudes. The tube weighs 220 lbs, the whole thing comes close to 400 lbs., so it's definitely a two person scope. First light was June 2002. We plan to take the scope to NIAG and Prairie Skies in 2005.
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