Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - 70

ASTRONOMER'S WORKBENCH by Jerry Oltion
A Convertible Moon Buggy
Haul the whole kit and caboodle in one fell swoop.
LIKE MANY PROJECTS, Jack Roach's
" Moon Buggy " was born out of necessity.
Jack's observing site is at the end of
90 meters (300 feet) of driveway, and
by the time he and his granddaughter,
Chloe, hauled the telescope, base, eyepieces,
chairs, table, chart, etc. out to
the site, they logged close to half a mile.
That led to the obvious question: What
if they could put everything on a rolling
platform and take it all in one easy trip?
Something like a little red wagon, only
bigger, would do nicely.
Well, Jack had a little red wagon
nobody was using anymore. That was
way too small, but it served as a starting
point. He also had a surplus jogging
stroller. The stroller's center of gravity
was way too high, and its three-wheel
design was way too unstable, but it had
two nice, big rear wheels. If he took
the steering truck from the front of
the wagon and the rear wheels from
the stroller, then spanned the gap with
some leftover plywood, he could make
the cart any size he wanted.
Jack has two telescopes: an 8-inch
f/9 Dobsonian and a 6-inch f/5
home-built equatorial. He measured
the footprint of each scope and built
a cardboard scale model to make sure
the platform would accommodate
either scope. He wanted the cart to be
as low as possible for stability, so he
designed the platform to hang from the
baby stroller's axle supports (its former
legs), which meant the front needed
a gooseneck in order for the deck to
remain level when
connected to the
wagon wheels.
That worked in
his favor in that
the gooseneck
allows room for
the wheels when
the cart makes a
tight turn.
The deck
also needed to
be wider than
the baby stroller
wheel separation.
Jack could have
gone to considerable
trouble
to lengthen the
axle, but he felt
the wheels were
Jack's granddaughter,
Chloe,
easily pulls the fully
loaded Moon Buggy
out to their driveway
observing site.
70 SEPTEMBER 2021 * SKY & TELESCOPE
pThe buggy is basically a platform with
steerable wagon wheels in front and baby
stroller wheels in back. Jack built a gooseneck
for the front wheels to keep the platform both
low and level.
spaced wide enough as they were, so
he simply cut notches in the platform
for the wheels to fit into. The wagon
steering mechanism proved too loose,
which made the buggy wobbly in front,
but removing the cotter pin and tightening
the bolt snugged it up enough to
eliminate that problem.
The platform itself had some frontto-back
flex to it, so Jack screwed a
2-by-4 edge-on to the underside down
the middle. That worked great until
the first trip over the threshold of his
storage building, when the buggy highcentered
on the 2-by-4. So Jack ripped
it down to a 2-by-2, which gained
enough room to clear the threshold
while still retaining enough stiffness to
keep the deck rigid.
The gooseneck provided a good spot
to store an eyepiece case, but it needed
something to hold the case in place. So
Jack screwed two semicircles of plywood
- rough first-quarter Moons - to the
sides. He considered painting craters
on them, but then he remembered that
he had a fairly good photo of the Moon
he'd taken through his 8-inch scope.
He printed that out and sandwiched the
hemispheres between acrylic sheets, and
JACK ROACH (2)

Sky & Telescope - September 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - September 2021

Contents
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - Cover1
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - Cover2
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - 1
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - Contents
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - 3
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - 4
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - 5
Sky & Telescope - September 2021 - 6
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