My early scope, a 900 mm Bushnell, hadn’t seen much use lately, so I converted it into a true ‘grab and go’. I added a diagonal and some weekend wood working to come up with this.
At 30x, I can hold an image pretty steady over the shoulder. I can comfortably go up to about 45 degrees, and can strain a bit to go higher.
The whole rig is pretty light and can be held easily with one hand.
I’m currently using big rubber bands, and it holds the scope snug enough, but I may go with more substantial straps. Other improvements will be adding a handle (shoulder strap?) to the top and moving the red-dot finder closer to the eyepiece. Also in the plan is re-wiring the red-dot finder to a trigger switch. I’m also toying with the idea of placing a small clipboard to strap on a small set of star maps in front. (Sort of like sheet music holders for a marching band.)
That said, the optics need some work as I can’t use my eyepieces as the focus is a tad ‘short’.
What started out as sort of a tongue-in-cheek project, now seems to have some merit.
