| This black-anodized 7” Astro-Tech short universal dovetail plate fits the dovetail slot of the Vixen-style saddle used on current Vixen and Vixen-style altazimuth and German equatorial mounts. Such mounts include the Astro-Tech Voyager altazimuth; Celestron CG-5 and Advanced Series equatorial mounts; Meade LXD-75 equatorial mount; and Vixen Polaris, Great Polaris, and Sphinx equatorials, or Porta altazimuth mounts.
The Astro-Tech universal dovetail is designed primarily to hold the mounting rings of short focal length Astro-Tech, TeleVue, Parks, Takahashi, and Meade refractors, plus those of the smaller Astro-Tech, Questar, Meade, and Celestron catadioptric optical tubes.
The dovetail has two unthreaded 6.9mm diameter mounting holes at the ends of the dovetail and a 0.25” wide x 5” long slot on the plate’s centerline for attaching rings and other accessories using 1/4”-20 or metric bolts. The configuration of the slot and mounting holes is shown in the engineering drawing in the feature image below. This combination of the slot and the mounting holes allows you to install virtually any configuration of mounting rings.
The underside of the dovetail is routed out to a depth of 10mm so that the mounting holes and slots are all effectively countersunk into the underside of the dovetail. This assures that the heads of 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.
There is also a 1/4”-20 thread hole at each end of the plate. This lets you install 1/4”-20 bolts in the holes to act as safety stops. These will keep the dovetail from sliding out of the mount saddle unexpectedly should the mount’s locking knob loosen accidentally.
The 5/8” thick dovetail is precision-machined of aluminum stock. It measures 15” long x 42mm wide at its widest point (36mm wide across the top ring mounting surface) and is hard-anodized black for durability. It weighs 6.4 ounces. | 
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