Telescope Trailer

Scope

The scope I built is a 20" f5.

Galixy Optics 1/25th wave 20"f5 2" thick primary
Galixy Optics 3.1 EDF
Feather Touch 2" focuser
Dob Driver 2000 with goto software
Customized Telrad finder with pulsing bull's-eye and heater.
Heated secondary

Trailer

The scope fits in so nicely that you could go four wheeling with it! Plenty of room for all of your camping and or stargazing needs.

Carpeted form fitting cradle snugly fits main tube.
Built in Mirror storage with temp control.
A shelf holds the secondary mirror section snugly.
A compartment that hold two deep-cycle marine batteries can be charged via an onboard retractable 110v line or the tow vehicles wiring harness.
Backlit power reserve meter.
110v/1500wt inverter with two GFCI outlets.
50 wt/ch AM-FM stereo cassette player.
Red light backlit Heated Eyepiece holder with two heat settings. Room for ten 1 ¼ eyepieces and eight 2” eyepieces.
Programmable Temp humidity sensor for ambient, mirror storage and mirror itself with automatic multiple fan controls.
Red or white selectable interior lights.
Variable intensity chart lights.
12v wing nut posts and two cigarette lighter plugs for miscellaneous power.
Six foot ladder storage compartment.
Dimmable red LED clock on GMT, synced to the atomic clock at the naval observatory.

About the temperature controlled mirror storage

I discovered the need to cool my mirror the first time I took it out. Tube currents. An 80 pound piece of Pyrex doesn't cool very fast or evenly. It took over 3 hours for perfect "seeing". The mirror was in my garage that day and it was probably 90 degrees in there. That night it went down to about 60 degrees and my mirror was still hot. I did install a fan in the mirror cell but that proved to be insufficient. I knew that if I cooled it to much it would dew up. That same day I saw a Coleman camping cooler that kept food cold or hot and used 12 volts to do it. That's it! but how in the hell does this thing work and where do I get the "thing" from? I called Coleman. They sold me a thermo-electric Peltier chip, the heat sinks that go with it and the installation instructions needed to repair the cooler. All this for 30 bucks. The device uses the Peltier effect. Just apply 12 volts and one side gets hot and the other side gets cold. Reverse the power and the opposite sides heat and cool. It turned out that the cooler you keep the hot side, the colder the colder the cold side gets. So I put the heat sinks on and stuck the hot side into a bucket of ice water. The cold side got 37 degrees below zero! I realized all I had to do was store the mirror in a box that was cold and the mirror would be cold when ever I wanted to view. No tube currents! But how would I keep it from getting to cold and forming dew the minute I took it out? I would have to install a thermostat. I used a $20.00 model. It runs on two AA batteries, but using a relay, it can switch 12 volts at 20 amps. So now I just set the thermostat 5 degrees above the predicted viewing temperature and I am set to view the minute I set up with no tube currents or any other temperature aberrations.

Back to The Drake