Lloyd Adam This binocular chair rotates on a ground board like a Dobsonian. The back reclines with the binoculars attached to the chair back so they maintain the same position relative to your eyes.
	Doug Arion Kenosha, Wisconsin USA Taking the minimalist approach, this 6" f/7.5 Equatorial Newtonian has a completely open tube assembly. Unfortunately, Doug says his observing location in has plenty of light pollution. Not good for a scope this open, but it is beautiful. This scope took 4th Place for Craftsmanship at the 1996 Stellafane convention.
	Arunah Hill Group Cummington, Massachusetts USA Looking almost more like a carnival ride than a telescope, this historical 13" f/12.5 Fitz refractor was restored by the hard work of the entire club. The tube assembly alone checks in at 300 pounds. The scope took the 2nd Place award for Mechanical Excellence at the 1996 Stellafane convention.
	Dan Bakken Spokane, Washington USA Dan and Mike Benz's 33" Dob was featured in the September 92 Sky and Telescope. Proving there is no cure for aperture fever, Dan's latest project is a 41.2" f/4. Get all the details at Dan's web page.
	David Barrett Pennsylvania USA This 12.5" f/5 Dobsonian wins the "Special Award for The Most Stuff Hanging Off a Telescope". Let's see, we've got 2 finders, Telrad, guide scope, dew remover, dob driver, setting circles...
	Scott Berfield Scott calls this 8" Newtonian "The Zebra" due to it's unique tube consisting of glued strips of poplar and mahogany. The tube was saturated with epoxy resin and reinforced on the inside with fiberglass cloth. The mounting is a Super Polaris, and the primary came from a Meade scope. The mirror cell is held in place with slotted brass plates that allow the mirror to be shifted between visual and CCD positions.
	Tom Bernie Gloucester, Massachusetts USA This binocular mount is made from black anodized aluminum tubing. The quality of finish and smooth movement are comparable to the expensive commercial mounts.
	Bruce Blanchard Hadley, Massachusetts USA The scope here is a commercial refractor, but Bruce made the very nicely machined mounting. The azimuth moves on a fairly conventional bearing but the altitude discs ride on Teflon pads as can be seen in the second photo.
	Tony Bolivar Vancouver, British Columbia Canada This 12.5 inch f/4.25 Newtonian has scope tube and tripod of aluminum and the equatorial head is machined carbon steel. The homemade optics consist of a 12.5" diameter full thickness primary and a 2.6" diagonal.
	Glenn Burke West Patterson, New Jersey USA This refractor and mount are built around an old war surplus Kodak f/6 Aero Ektar photographic lens.
	Steve Bygren Colorado Springs, Colorado USA 8" Classical Cassegrain transportable on commercial airlines. The spider and upper ring were salvaged from a Parks scope and the truss tubes are carbon graphite arrow shafts. The mounting is a Dobsonian, but fits upon a standard photo tripod.
	Armen Caroglanian This 10" f/7.8 fork mounted Newtonian features a removable pick-off mirror that feeds a second focuser for off-axis guiding and a sliding optical tube assembly for balancing.
	Joe Castoro Long Island, New York USA This scope took 2nd Place in Mechanical Excellence and 2nd Place in Craftsmanship at the 1995 Stellafane convention. The entire thing is finished in fake granite paint. Note the motorized jacks, these lift the mount allowing the wheels to be rotated into place.
	Bob Crelin Branford, Connecticut USA This is a Comet Orrery - the first one ever as far as we know. Moving the knob (the comet's nucleus) changes the length and angle of the tails with respect to the sun and even shows the dust tail diverging from the gas tail. The beautiful baroque decorations were drawn with a simple ball-point pen. This entry took 2nd Place in the Special category at the 1997 Stellafane convention. We think it's one of the coolest and most unique things we've ever seen at Stellafane. Bob has asked us to add that the whole concept is © 1997, Bob Crelin.
	Dan Davidson Reading, Pennsylvania USA This 6" f/9 Dob-Newt has dark walnut stained wood and a smooth fiberglass coated sonotube. Dan is an auto painter which gives him access to the tools to make this really nice tube. It has a white pearlescent finish that Dan says is a standard Audi color. This scope took 3rd Place for Craftsmanship and 3rd Place for Design at the 1997 Stellafane convention. The attention to detail on areas like the end rings, the focuser mount, and the spider mounts made this one of the best scopes on Breezy Hill. As you can see in the third photo, it's also fully baffled.
	Scott Degenhardt This 12.5 inch f/10 Newtonian features a Crayford focuser built from these plans here on AstronomyDaily.com. The scope also has remote 2-axis collimation, full baffles, and a primary mirror from Nova Optical.
	Paul Dellechiaie The eyepiece maintains an almost constant position on this TeleVue Genesis. The mount is a unique sort of hybrid Springfield-Dobsonian called a "Torqued-Arm Mount." They are usually used on a Newtonian, with the counterweight bar pointing upwards.
	John Desbiens Hillsboro, New Hampshire USA This 12.5" f/6.4 Dob-Newt took 1st Place for Craftsmanship at the 1996 Stellafane convention. It features a primary mirror by Steve Eldrige, who took the 1st Place award for Optical Excellence with another scope.
	Roy Diffrient Monkton, Maryland USA This Dobsonian was not only featured in Sky & Telescope (Feb, 94), but won 1st Place in Craftsmanship and 3rd Place in Mechanical Excellence at the 1995 Stellafane convention. By the way, the letters under the mirror cell stand for Fan, Heat, Lights, and Circles (setting circles, that is).
	Ed Dougherty Dracut, Massachusetts USA Ed built every optical component on his 6" f/15 refractor, including the objective lens, finder lenses, the lenses in the eyepieces, and even the prism in the star diagonal!
	Steve Durham Long Lake, New York USA It seems the power company said that the cherry tree in Steve's front lawn had to come down. Steve harvested the wood and used it to build the tube, equatorial mount, and tripod for this scope. He reports there are two larger trees that may come down in the near future!
	Louis Fowler Louisville, Kentucky USA Designed from Richard Berry's Build Your Own Telescope and a sales brochure on the PortaBall commercial telescope. His first scope, it is an 8" f/6, with the spherical base made from an acrylic light globe reinforced with fiberglass. The base is a bar stool cut at angles to hold the sphere. He reports his wife is still looking for the stool. The upper cage is made from PVC pipe with the excess weight cut off.
	Fritz Garrison Jericho, Vermont USA This 4-1/4" f/6 Newtonian is made from clear Plexiglas mostly as a teaching tool. The layout of all components is clear (no pun intended) and by filling it with smoke, the actual light path can be seen. But clear out the smoke and it's a completely functional scope. Fritz earned the Innovative Component award at the 1997 Stellafane convention with this scope. Fritz's daughter, Emma Garrison, took the 2nd Place award in the Junior category with this scope.
	Georg (last name unknown) Hamburg, Germany The foreground scope is a 150mm aperture Schiefspiegler with a 3 meter focal length. Behind it is a 150mm aperture f/15 refractor with a Zeiss Jena AS-Semiapochromat objective lens. If anyone knows the email address or current web site for the builder, Georg, please let us know.
	Dan Gray This 8" f/6 Newtonian features a computer controlled alt-az mount with a field de-rotator. Full details were available on Dan Gray's web page, but it has moved or been taken down...
	Dave Groski This 8" f/7 Dobsonian features a tube that breaks in two, an easily disassembled mount, and a homemade digital setting circle assembly.  It won 1st Place for Optical Excellence at the 1996 Stellafane convention.
	Martin Hamar Wilton, Connecticut USA This trailer mounted telescope mount took the 1st Place Special category award at the 1997 Stellafane convention. The photo sequence shows the mount retracting into it's trailer.
	Forrest & Michael Hamilton Built by a father and son, this 6" f/9.5 Dobsonian features collapsible truss tubes made from telescoping tool handles.
	George Helmke This meteor speed determination device works by cutting off the lens at a predetermined rate during long exposures, resulting in dashed meteor trails. The spacing of the dashes is then used to measure the meteor's speed.
	Erwin Herrig Chemnitz, Germany This 10" Yolo reflector was fully described on Erwin Herrig's web page, but it's no longer around. David Stevick has the English abstract, and lots of other information on Yolos, Schiefspieglers, and of course, Stevick-Pauls on his web site. Look around while you're there, it's a great site.
	Michael Hill Marlboro, Massachusetts USA This is a "solar observatory in-a-box", which is a combination Spectroscope, Spectrohelioscope, and Prominence scope. A full construction article for this design is available right here on AstronomyDaily.com. This more conventional scope was shown at the 1997 Stellafane convention. Although it is not as specialized as the solar observatory, this 8" f/8 Newtonian did have a solar filter attached when we looked at it.
	Cap Hossfield New Milford, New York USA Cap built this solar projection theater to view the 1998 total eclipse in Aruba. Built from balsa wood and heat shrink plastic film used to cover model aircraft, it is collapsible and weighs less than a 35mm camera. This sundial is made entirely from balsa wood. Despite it's solid appearance, it weighs less than a pound. It took the 3rd Place award in the Special category at the 1997 Stellafane convention.
	Steve Hubbard This 8" f/4.45 Newtonian follows the true John Dobson tradition - it's made of readily available parts for almost no money! The "tube" is made from angle aluminum with aluminized bubble wrap attached with Velcro. The altitude bearings are PVC pipe and the tripod is made from crutches.
	David Iacovone South Plainfield, New Jersey USA David reports "This started out as a simple refractor!" Later he went to a larger objective and the original optical tube became the new scope's drawtube. Well, this type of re-working continued unabated for quite a while, so now the "Adapt-a-Scope" has all the interchangeable objectives, focusers, drawtubes, adaptors, camera mounts, etc. pictured here, including a 13-7/8" objective lens with a 36" focal length. In the latter configuration, the four-element design includes the plano-convex primary, a positive meniscus corrector, and a doublet color corrector lens. They all switch in and out and lock in place with thumbscrews.
	Kelly Jons Willoughby, Ohio USA The prototype for this folded refractor was fully described in the February 1997 issue of Sky & Telescope. The scope he brought to the 1997 Stellafane convention is a 4" f/10 mounted in a 6" diameter tube. Kelly received the 4th Place Craftsmanship award and the 4th Place Design award for this scope.
	Carl Lancaster This 10" f/6 Newtonian on a split-ring mounting features a gigantic declination drive gear. It was made from a long rack gear that was bent around and screwed to the semi-circular spoked wheel on the declination axis.
	Joe Lemay This 6" f/10 refractor rides on a super-smooth Dobsonian style mount. The upper end of the pier ends in a "ground board" with three Teflon pads. The forward portion of the mount has a chamber for holding counterweights.
	Pierre Lemay Blainville, Quebec Canada Despite it's appearance, this scope is not made from a bowling ball! The ball is cast from fiberglass and features a single aluminum truss tube and a nylon block for the focuser. It is polar aligned and rests on a Poncet-style driven roller.
	Bill Lennartz Despite it's professional appearance, this 16" f/4.5 Newtonian is made mostly out of parts from the local hardware store, except for the optics from Galaxy. The driven equatorial fork mount is made of wood so vibrations dampen quickly. The drive system consists of a 1 rpm synchro motor driven threaded rod, with a traveling nut that pulls a cable around a disk. The disk is clutched to the polar axis. The RA shaft is 4" diameter, 1/4" wall aluminum tubing and the declination bearings are UHMW polyurethane riding on Formica, all screwed or epoxied to plywood. Construction time was about 1-1/2 years.
	Rob Miller His first home-built scope, this is a 10" f/4.5 with optics from Orion Telescope Center. The tube is made from birch plywood with the octagon made up from four 4" slats and four 5-5/8" slats interleaved. The mirror cell includes the valve springs from a motorcycle engine! A bit of elbow grease and paint made a beautiful mount from a pile of rusting metal.
	Bob Novack Cranberry, Pennsylvania USA The first scope is an 6" f/10 Stevick-Paul that took the 2nd Place award for Design at the 1997 Stellafane convention. More details on this design can be found on David Stevick's Home Page. The other scope here is an 8" f/5 Newtonian on a Dobsonian mount.
	Dennis O'Connell Corning, New York USA Dennis is definitely the "King of PVC Scopes". Among his collection are a folded refractor and a Dobson-style solar telescope. The latter is not a reference to the mounting, John Dobson also invented this unique solar telescope concept where the filter and diagonal are the same piece of glass. If the filter ever breaks or falls out of place, there's no risk of viewing the unfiltered sun, because your diagonal is gone now as well. There is an extensive article on this style in the August 1989 issue of Sky and Telescope.
	Joan O'Reilly Putnam Valley, New York USA 5th grader Joan took 3rd Place in the Junior Mechanical category at the 1996 Stellafane convention for her 6" f/8.5 Newtonian, as well as a 2nd Place award for Junior Optical Excellence.
	Rob O'Toole Chester, New Hampshire USA This 10" f/6 Dobsonian was built in about 10 months. It uses 1/2" plywood throughout and has a primary mirror from Parks Optical. One of the more interesting features is the Quaker oatmeal box used as a protective enclosure around the secondary mirror. Four slits are cut in the end of the box to engage the spider vanes. A plastic lid is snapped over the end and you have a dustproof cover for the secondary. Rob's four year-old son is the photo model.
	Phil Owen Although it appears to be a basic pipe-mounting, This 8" f/6 Newtonian glides on Teflon bearings concealed in the machined pipe fittings. This is Phil's first scope and he reports total cost was under $250.
	Pat Passalacqua Rome, New York USA This 6" f/9 Newtonian features beautiful woodwork all over and unique bronze shafts. It was awarded 1st Place in Craftsmanship at the 1997 Stellafane convention. The tube is made from a cardboard sonotube with a multi-layered wood veneer. The usual problem with using veneer on a telescope is that dew can seep into the thin wood layer and soften the glue over time. The veneer that Pat used here includes a foil layer that keeps the assembly waterproof.
	Jim Paulsen Underhill, Vermont USA Jim showed two scopes at the 1997 Stellafane convention: a 4-1/4" f/10 Newtonian on a pipe mounting, and a 10" f/6 Newtonian without any real mounting at all. The scope rests on a tray at the mirror end and is supported by prop arrangement at the truss tubes. Jim just lifts and moves the prop end for rough re-positioning and uses a screw driven slow motion control on the prop for fine aiming.
	Bill Prewitt This scope rests on a cylindrical bearing equatorial platform made from the plans available here on AstronomyDaily.com. Additional photo's of Bill's scope appear in the platform article.
	Dave Prowten Concord, Massachusetts USA This 10" f/5 Newtonian is built with a polar axis made from the front fork of a Norton motorcycle. We hesitated to ask Dave how long it took to drill all those lightening holes in the mirror cell!
	Fred Quarnstrom This 10" Dobsonian (based on the design in "Build your own Telescope, by Richard Berry), sits on a cylindrical bearing equatorial mount made from plans available right here on AstronomyDaily.com. The tube is made of fir strips ripped from 2x4's and coated with fiberglass. A wooden platform and shock cord holds a video camera for making solar or lunar videos. This scope took the Best First Scope award at the 1995 Table Mountain Star Party.
	Ron Ravneberg Columbus, Ohio USA All feature a unique dual truss tube design and a head assembly consisting of a simple board. The head-board slides into a slot in the mirror box for storage and on some of the scopes can be slid higher or lower to provide different focal plane locations. A circle of thin black plastic Velcro's to the diagonal to block stray light. Ron has also contributed very complete construction notes for this design.
	Scott Reeves Gorham, Maine USA Although he lives under dark skies, Scott designed this 8" for travel. It collapses down to a 11" x 14" x 17" cube and weighs only 25 pounds.
	Bruce Rubin Newburgh, New York USA This 15" f/4.5 Dobsonian (blue) weighs just 80 lbs. The mounting, mirror box, and head assembly are all made from sheet aluminum. The truss tube assembly attaches in a manner that allows it to fold up as a single piece. This scope (red), from the 1997 Stellafane convention, is a 18" f/4.5 and features telescoping truss tubes and the same unique one-piece folding truss tube assembly. The break-down procedure is fully depicted in the photo series at left. Yes, that small box in the final picture is the entire 18" scope! The last photo shows the 18-point flotation cell. The wire running between the pads keeps them all properly aligned when the mirror is removed.
	Bruce Sayre Applegate, California USA An ultra-lightweight 20" Dobsonian. Full construction details and many more photos may be found on Bruce's web site.
	Frances St. Martin Drummondville, Quebec Canada This 12.5" f/6 Dob-Newt has a tube of fiberglass, made by using a sonotube as a mold. The massive mirror cell is made from thick aluminum sheet stock.
	Steve Swayze Portland, Oregon USA These are among the many scopes built by Steve Swayze and his brother Bruce. The first is a 40 inch (!) which is 17 feet high when pointed at the zenith. To get a sense of scale, the "finder" scope mounted on it is a 12.5". That's Oregon's Mt. Hood in the background. The next photo is a 12.5" f/5, done in dark red padauk and maple. Finally, the truss-tube scope is a 12.5" f/6.6 done in nara and birds-eye maple. These and more scopes can be found at the Swayze Optical web site.
	Bruce Szablak This 10" f/6 Dob-Newt has a tube that comes apart in the middle so it will fit in his Honda Accord. To keep weight down the tube is made from 1/4" plywood. Fitting the panels into routed grooves in the 1 x 2 corner pieces and using internal baffles help keep the tube strong and rigid. Trunk latches are used to secure the two sections together and a baffle made out of 3/4" plywood extends out of the lower section to provide for a snug fit.
	Bill Tomaszewski This 6" f/8 planetary Newtonian is just loaded with great features: 1) It has a unique focuser that lets the eyepiece actually drop below the level of the tube; 2) the finder bracket incorporates a solar finder; 3) the primary is offset towards the focuser side of the tube to allow an even smaller diagonal; and 4) the spider employs a single vane held under tension with two sets of wires. Bill's scope received a special Innovative Component Award and 3rd Place for Optical Excellence (under 12.5") at the 1996 Stellafane convention.
	Jim Vail This unique camera tracking platform received a Special Award at the 1995 Stellafane convention. It works like a two-part barn-door tracker, but in a different plane, sort-of. You can figure out how it works by carefully studying the photo.
	Al Verticchio Calverton, New York USA These gigantic binoculars with 10" objectives on an even more gigantic tripod and mount had a line of waiting observers even in the daytime.
	Patti Vogt 10 year-old Patti's fully functional miniature truss tube Dob-Newt earned her the 1st Place award in the Junior category at the 1997 Stellafane convention.
	Mike Ward Saratoga, New York USA This Dobsonian took 3rd Place in Craftsmanship at the 1995 Stellafane convention. An especially nice touch is the upper cage assembly, lined with one of the far southern charts from Sky Atlas 2000.0, it is very Questar-esque.
	Allon Wildgust Brandon, Vermont USA This outstanding 8" f/5.4 Newtonian on a Jamieson mount took three awards at the 1996 Stellafane convention: 1st Place for Mechanical Excellence, 2nd Place for Craftsmanship, and 2nd Place for Optical Excellence (under 12.5"). First described in the May 1994 Sky & Telescope this mounting is cross between a Dobsonian and an equatorial. Kinematically it's a German equatorial, but it uses classical Dobsonian components and construction techniques. This example is probably one of the finest scopes ever shown at Stellafane.
	Peter Wraight This Dob-Newt Binocular is one of the best binocular scopes we've ever seen. The over-and-under design fits nicely in a normal Dobsonian style mount. The lower scope has a larger diagonal and it's light goes up through the upper scope to the side-by-side eyepieces. This scope took 1st Place for Mechanical Excellence at the 1995 Stellafane convention.
	Builder Unknown We never found out who's scope this was, but it sure had beautiful oak woodwork.