Good day ladies and gents. A little while back I was looking over the various options for spotting scope stands, in particular the low mount tripod type that shooters use in the field. These come in various shapes and sizes and can be used for observation thru to F-Class. For those in the United States there are some fantastic off the shelf items, however the price of these units is rather high. I did find a nice unit that fit the bill, but when I found out what the postage costs were I almost had a stroke! In a nut shell I was looking at $400+ AUD for something that I wanted. Then I got to thinking... I already own a wonderful Sinclair spotting scope stand for a bench, why couldn’t I just modify that to accommodate my needs? The Sinclair stand is extremely well made and offers very fine adjustments allowing for easy location of your target.
What I needed to do was find a solution to add a low profile set of legs and not break the budget. The solution my friends, was a very affordable $39 away. A quick trip down the road to any Billy Hydes/Allans music store and I walked out with a brand new microphone stand. I doubt you have these same stores in the United States, but I know that Amazon sells an identical product... they probably all come from the exact same factory in China.
First thing I needed to do was remove the mic stand from the tripod base, a simple task that anyone could perform. The next task was to mate the Sinclair stand with the mic stand base. This was not the most straight forward of tasks because the bushing that was on the outside of the mic stand body was just a touch small in diameter than the Sinclair stand tube outer diameter. A bit of elbow grease, sand paper and about 30 minutes sorted this out for me! It would have taken less time if Dremel did not make such crappy tooling that vaporised in my hands, but that’s another story for another day.
The end product is a ROCK SOLID bench stand and field stand for my spotting scope. Anyone that has a large spotter understands the need for virtually no movement in the stand itself, and with wind always around this is hard to overcome. I look forward to using this at an upcoming F Class event this week.
Project cost breakdown:
Sinclair spotting scope stand $139 USD
Legacy Mic Stand $39 AUD
Total = $170 AUD (excluding shipping cost for the Sinclair stand)
I think you will all agree that this project came out mint! I'm very happy with the results and the fact that I do not need to have a bench scope stand and a separate field stand.
What I needed to do was find a solution to add a low profile set of legs and not break the budget. The solution my friends, was a very affordable $39 away. A quick trip down the road to any Billy Hydes/Allans music store and I walked out with a brand new microphone stand. I doubt you have these same stores in the United States, but I know that Amazon sells an identical product... they probably all come from the exact same factory in China.
First thing I needed to do was remove the mic stand from the tripod base, a simple task that anyone could perform. The next task was to mate the Sinclair stand with the mic stand base. This was not the most straight forward of tasks because the bushing that was on the outside of the mic stand body was just a touch small in diameter than the Sinclair stand tube outer diameter. A bit of elbow grease, sand paper and about 30 minutes sorted this out for me! It would have taken less time if Dremel did not make such crappy tooling that vaporised in my hands, but that’s another story for another day.
The end product is a ROCK SOLID bench stand and field stand for my spotting scope. Anyone that has a large spotter understands the need for virtually no movement in the stand itself, and with wind always around this is hard to overcome. I look forward to using this at an upcoming F Class event this week.
Project cost breakdown:
Sinclair spotting scope stand $139 USD
Legacy Mic Stand $39 AUD
Total = $170 AUD (excluding shipping cost for the Sinclair stand)
I think you will all agree that this project came out mint! I'm very happy with the results and the fact that I do not need to have a bench scope stand and a separate field stand.
