Camera tripod + galvanised bracket

Rebuilt, 30 August 2026

The azimuth axis is now a friction-loaded roller-bearing swivel — lazy-susan smooth, but loaded so it does not free-spin and holds where you leave it. Swivelling is light and continuous instead of shove-and-overshoot.

What this does and does not fix, stated up front so tonight can settle it:

• Should fix: re-acquiring the target after it drifts out of frame. Previously the binding cost of a drift-through run was the fight to re-point afterwards.
• Should fix: vibration from the act of pointing, since it no longer needs a shove.
• Does not fix: the drift itself. Still undriven and still about 17 px/s — the mount is smoother, not tracking. Run length is unchanged.
• Unknown: whether the friction is set well enough to nudge in small increments, or whether it still overshoots at the scale of a 46' field.

Before the rebuild

A camera tripod and a piece of galvanised bracket, no bearing. It was exactly as agricultural as it sounds.

The instinct is to treat the drift as the problem to solve. It isn't, yet: drift doesn't degrade a stack, it only caps how long a single run can be. The working method is to park the scope at the leading edge, take hands off, and let the target drift through the frame.

Fine motion and a drive become worth it when run length is actually the binding constraint. Right now sampling is.