Showing posts with label tripods. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tripods. Show all posts

1 Apr 2013

Tripods for optical comms

The one I missed on eBay
This evening I was annoyed with myself for not bidding for a tripod on eBay in time that went for just £6.50 in the end.  It had a nice solid structure and a 360 degree marked calibration on the horizontal pan adjustment and would have been ideal for my non line-of-sight optical comms over the horizon, where the ability to return accurately to a know bearing is important when hunting for weak signals.

So, can readers make any recommendations for something similar?
My requirements are:
  1. Solid construction so it won't wobble around in wind with the optics and detector mounted on top.
  2. Some way of calibrating the direction to within a degree or so horizontally so that known directions can be confidently returned to. Ideally a large 360 degree marked scale.
  3. A way for leveling the head assembly so it can be aimed just above the horizon.
  4. Low cost as I am looking for an inexpensive solution (don't want the tripod and mount to cost much more than the rest of the kit, which is about £5-10 total!)
Not being a great photographer, I know little about tripods and heads. Looking on eBay I didn't find anything close to the one I missed. It was SO annoying as I only missed it by 5 minutes having been out treating a fence in the (rare) sunshine today.