One thing that I've been really happy with is my idea for a tripod base as an alternative to a pier. I have two bases setup in my yard, one for each mount. I can polar align once, and be able to keep that alignment for months. I've seen PA of around 0.1 months after doing a drift align with PHD. This reduces my setup time drastically and allows me to be very methodical when doing an alignment.
This is very simple to do. Just get threaded pipe and a flange attachment, screw them together like so:
And pound three of them into the ground where the tripod bottoms are. Make sure the mount is roughly pointing in the right direction, and level.
Do a very careful polar alignment once, and you won't have to do it again for a long time. You can now take the mount into the house at night, and bring it back out when you want to use it. Make sure not adjust Alt-Az on the mount or the tripod leg length, and you are good to go for quite a while!
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