Backyard Voyager
Ray Cash is a cabinetmaker and finish carpenter by trade, who has been interested in astronomy most of his life. He and his family live in San Francisco, where Ray was fortunate enough to have learned the art of telescope making from John Dobson himself. He continues to build telescopes and passes on the knowledge, teaching others and maintaining The San Francisco Sidewalk Dobsonian Telescope Plans Website. To find out more about Ray Cash and telescope building, you can visit his website: Ray Cash
Plans and Construction Tips for Building
a 13" Airline-Transportable "Travel Scope"
by Ray Cash
My lovely wife next to the 13" scope in Hawaii, 1998.
The scope breaks down and fits into its
own sturdy, airline-transportable case.
I made this telescope around a 13" Coulter f/4.4 mirror in 1991 after seeing an article emphasizing such an approach by Tom Clark in Sky and Telescope of about that time. Since then, this scope has served me well--whether it has been used on a sidewalk here in San Francisco, traveled on a back seat of a small car en route to the Sierras, or packed away as luggage on a commercial airline. I even re-designed my larger 17.5" scope around these principles:
13.1"; 17.5"; Equatorial Platform
On the following pages you will find all the dimensions and construction tips needed to make one of these scopes--or one similar--for yourself.
Turn the page to:
The Table of Contents