Losmandy V Series 7" Universal Dovetail Plate - VUP7

Losmandy V Series 7" Universal Dovetail Plate

The Losmandy 7" universal dovetail plate has been fitted for the 46 mm dovetail slot of the saddle used on Vixen-style German equatorial mounts. This includes Vixen Great Polaris, Sphinx, or Porta mounts; Celestron CG-5 and Advanced Series mounts; and Meade LXD-75 mounts). It is designed primarily to hold the mounting rings of shorter focal length Astro-Tech, TeleVue, Orion, Takahashi, Vixen, and Meade refractors. Since it is a standard size Vixen dovetail, it could be used to hold many other accessories, as well. It measures 7" long x 1.75" wide x 0.6" thick, and it is anodized black for good looks and durability. It weighs 7 ounces.

The dovetail has a series of 12 mounting holes for installing virtually any configuration of mounting rings. The holes are countersunk on the underside of the dovetail. This assures that the bolts holding the mounting rings will not protrude and keep the dovetail plate from sliding back and forth in the mount saddle for balancing. Thread-in bolts are provided to act as stops to keep the dovetail and optical tube from sliding out of the mount saddle should the mount's locking knob loosen accidentally. The 0.6" thick dovetail is precision-machined of aluminum stock and is anodized black for good looks and durability.

About Losmandy

Losmandy mounts and dovetail systems have long been acknowledged as a pioneering force in the industry. With two mounts: the lightweight GM-8, and the universal G-11, most optical tube assembly can be supported by a Losmandy mount. Unlike most of our competitors who only use stepper motors, Losmandy has both entry level mounts with stepper motors, as well as more sophisticated servo motors that are otherwise only found on competitor mounts in the $10,000+ range.  Losmandy mounts driven by servo motors provide far more torque and accuracy than mounts using stepper motors. For example, the GM8 has an 8°/sec slew rate and 5 arc-second positional accuracy.

Known for their stunning design and their ultra-precision mechanics, the mounts also lead the way with their powerful Gemini 2 Go-To software, onboard computer modules, and hand-controllers. The Go-To positioning system is unique among its competitors with its full-color graphic touch-screen display. The software has over 40,000 pre-programmed objects to choose from, which makes finding the desired portion of the sky amazingly simple. And as things evolve, firmware upgrades are available over the internet so your system will always remain current. It also can be switched between English, French, Spanish, or German, to better accommodate Losmandy’s worldwide market.

A truly industry-changing innovation was introduced by Losmandy way back in 1986, shortly after the first Losmandy mounts came on the market. This was the concept of the dovetail accessory system that has become the industry standard. This wide array of different size dovetail plates and mounting rings solved the various problems users were having as they tried to interface tube assemblies to mounts, piggy-back scopes, mount cameras to optics, etc.

Owner/designer Scott Losmandy first opened a small machine shop in Hollywood, CA in 1981. After five years of producing for others, often making products that were not especially interesting to him personally, he began developing his own line of products to sell.
His first design challenge came about almost by accident, as a result of joining a local astronomy club. After listening to members constantly complain about the price and quality of the telescope mounts on the market, he off-handedly remarked, “Why, I could make a better mount than these,” to which the universal reply was, “Well, why don’t you?” And so Losmandy Astronomical Products was born and Scott Losmandy found his true calling as a design engineer. Lucky him--lucky the rest of us interested in viewing the magic of the night sky.