Always to hand - thanks to new carrying handles

Sturdy carrying handles can help to stabilise compact telescopes. Big Dobsonians are impossible to transport without them.

No matter how manoeuvrable your telescope is, there will always come a time when you need an extra pair of hands - at the latest when you are wrestling with the prism rail and somehow need to free up one hand to tighten the clamping screw. So, with larger tubes, it's not a bad idea to attach a carrying handle to the tube rings opposite the prism rail, so you have a hand free. The additional stability the handle gives the tube ring structure is a useful side effect. Then, if the tube needs to be rotated or repositioned, the tube rings won’t twist or unnecessarily drag. And on your way home after a night in the cold, such a handle, which is usually made of plastic, is also much more comfortable to touch than the cold aluminium of the prism rail, which is usually otherwise used. And since the tube rings are usually positioned at the tube’s centre of gravity, you’ll find it behaves itself much better when negotiating your way up and down stairs with expensive equipment.

A handle or, if necessary, two of them, mounted close to the centre of gravity, also makes a heavyweight rocker box much more manoeuvrable. Especially when it comes to large but movable components, you often simply have no way of safely getting hold of them in order to get the equipment safely to where you are going to use it, never mind doing so in a way that is kind to your back.  But there are other alternatives to attaching a handle. In difficult cases, you could make your own carrying strap using heavy-duty tape such as used on window shutters. A shoulder pad is available from car accessory retailers: you can simply use a car seatbelt pad.

Author: Sven Wienstein / Licence: Oculum Verlag GmbH