That's my ultimate goal, an itinerant astronomy car to go in villages where there are no astronomy clubs. I also started teaching the few things I know about mirror making to my club and whoever asks.
I'm building public-compatible stuff now that I have my own stuff that is quite delicate to handle, after a few public nights where children grab onto a high-end eyepiece...
The 16.5" will be a very rugged scope to fulfill this purpose. I think John Dobson's approach to telescopes is the ultimate one, that is, the value of a scope is the number of people who looked through it
Instead of an eyepiece, i strongly recommend having a DSLR or other camera attached and showing the display on a nice screen. It makes it soooo much easier (although, it doesn't work great for nebulas or other faint objects). I've had a parent sort of utter "wait... we're looking at the moons... of jupiter... in real.... time?"
I'm building public-compatible stuff now that I have my own stuff that is quite delicate to handle, after a few public nights where children grab onto a high-end eyepiece...
The 16.5" will be a very rugged scope to fulfill this purpose. I think John Dobson's approach to telescopes is the ultimate one, that is, the value of a scope is the number of people who looked through it