I finally got a chance to get my 1200 goto up on my pier and now have
a chance to pose some questions. The power supply cord is about 4'
short of what I need to reach my 110v-12v convertor at the wall of my
observatory.
I can make do by moving but would like to take advantage of the conduits
I already have in
place below ground. Has anyone used some type of extension
to get a longer power cord?

Hi Bobby, the power cord does seem to be very short for use in the field.
I extended mine with a simple cigarette lighter extension cord which has a
male on one end and a female on the other. You can buy these from auto
parts stockists. The only problem is that the cable is rather thin and
coiled, so I replaced it with a heavy duty cable to ensure minimum volts
drop across the cable. There's not that much available in terms of simple
two core cable with ultra low resistance. In the end I used heavy duty
speaker cable that has pure copper rope conductors. This has the lowest
resistance of anything I could easily find - you can use 4ft or more of it
and you'll see virtually no difference in working voltage under load.
Although the insulation is not spec'd for this kind of application, 12v
will not present any problem at all provided that you don't treat it too
roughly. Just don't use it to carry mains voltage! :-)

Regards
--Philip

Philip Perkins - philip@...
Wiltshire UK & Luberon France
Astrocruise - http://www.astrocruise.com

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