The Super Half Hitch implements two-axis balancing without the use of counterweights.  Instead, the Super Half Hitch uses the weight of the telescope itself to counterbalance the off-axis loads created by the star diagonal, eyepiece, finder, bino-viewer and other accessories by shifting the telescope attachment point up-and-down as well as fore-and-aft.  A machined track on the Half Hitch's saddle plate provides the up-down adjustment, and the dovetail plate makes fore-aft adjustment easy.  Together, these adjustments allow the mass of the telescope and saddle to be centered on the altitude axis so that the scope is stable when pointed to any elevation and does no work against gravity when rotating — essential characteristics for a tracking mount and highly desirable for manual control, as well.

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Why Adding Friction Doesn't Solve Balance

Some claim that if you add enough friction into the altitude axis of a mount, then you do not have to balance your telescope.  This is a bad idea for at least five reasons:

• The unbalanced load will have to be lifted against gravity when turning in one direction and will be pushed by gravity when being turned in the opposite direction.  Turning the scope in one direction will necessarily feel much different than turning the scope in the opposite direction, making the scope hard to control.  Basic laws of physics guarantee this condition will exist for unbalanced loads.  Adding friction does not change this condition.

• The effect of an imbalanced load will change as you rotate your scope up and down in altitude — making the feel of the movements variable and hard to become accustomed to.

• The variable effects of an imbalanced load on movement in the altitude axis, will guarantee that the relative feel of the altitude and azimuth axes will not only differ, but also by variable amounts.  If you try to balance the feel between the axes by stiffening the movement in azimuth, then you will be confounded not only by the variable feel in the altitude axis but also by the changing effective lever arm for the azimuth axis as the scope is raised and lowered in altitude.

• High levels of friction mean more force is required to start the axis turning.  Not only is this large force hard to judge, but the laws of physics demand that the starting force will be at least a little greater than the force required to maintain the turning motion.  (Although the static and dynamic sliding friction values may be close, they are never identical.)  A slight jerking effect is inevitable .  When trying to make the small movements required for tracking and centering objects, this jerking effect is quite significant — especially when magnified many times by a telescope.  Frequently, in trying to compensate, one will let the turning force drop below the required level — and the jerking effect will get repeated.  Overshooting will be common, and one must reverse direction, which means one must also deal with the different feel which the axis has in one direction versus the other.

• Overcoming the initial starting friction will invariably cause the telescope structure to flex a little, storing energy that will cause a recoil when the mount is released.

As an example of how high friction works against the observer, consider trying to make a controlled movement of a scope with the eyepiece end of the optical tube extending twenty inches from the axis of rotation.  Suppose you want to shift the telescope direction by five arc-minutes — a bit more than five times the apparent diameter of Jupiter.  The end of the telescope tube must be "nudged" by only .03 inch — a completely impossible increment to control given the unavoidable physical effects described above!

No amount of apparent "smoothness" during longer sweeps can overcome the jerking effects for small centering and tracking adjustments.  A mount which resists shifts in balance is a mount that resists turning!  That’s the physics.  Even mounts with slow-motion controls but no provisions for full balancing must apply friction through clutches or clamps to overcome unbalanced loads — and suffer to some degree from the above problems.  The Super Half Hitch eliminates these problems by making complete two-axis balancing easy and by employing true low-friction bearings to make turning forces predictable, intuitive, and controllable.

The Balance Trimmer is used to easily zero-out the differences in eyepiece weights.  It has two-axis effect for keeping the balance perfect.  The small trim weight is NOT a counterweight for the entire off-axis load — but only nulls the differences in eyepiece weights.