I've seen many very clever arrangements for binocular viewing with relatively high power coupled with large objectives, which makes hand-held use problematic for many reasons.

Here are a few examples:

http://www.astronomybuff.com/binoculars-astronomy-tripod/

I once saw a fellow who had his reclining lawnchair and binocular setup mounted on a powered turntable, so he didn't even have to get out of the chair to swing around to look at a different part of the sky.

Binoculars are especially handy for older viewers, as it's easy to get either a "crick" in your neck or a backache (possibly both) standing or sitting at a telescope for any length of time. They capture some of the feel of looking at the *real* sky as well, since one uses both eyes, and the combination of CCD camera optics and video displays seems a little too much like watching a documentary on TV to me.

In cold weather, the ability to bundle up in a reclining chair can make the whole experience rather more satisfying as well, as one doesn't have to stand or sit in the open, and your layers of insulation can be rather thicker than would be advisable around a telescope. I have a pair of Celestron SkyMaster 20x100 binoculars and would not trade them for a monster telescope of any sort, because they're so very handy. I can use them just as easily to spot foxes in an open field at night, or nesting birds, because they pull in quite a bit of light. Having that sort of vision at night makes one feel a little like an owl, and there are *lots* of things to see, even on overcast nights.

They're also nice for sharing, because the naiive user doesn't have a learning curve to surmount, thinking of things as mirror images of reality, because what you see with the naked eye is what you see through binoculars, only better.

I agree that even smallish hand-holdable binoculars are nice as well, and certainly handier to pack along on a hike, but for general cameraderie *combined* with interesting things to see, large-objective binoculars are hard to beat.

Back in the olden days, such large binoculars designed for mounting on a pelorus were readily (and cheaply) available as war surplus, as the Navy used them on the bridge. I once purchased a naval five inch spotting scope (one supposes they were used to check the aim of one's *big* guns) for a hundred and fifty US dollars. Of course, money was considerly more valuable in those days, but I'm sure it had cost the Navy *many* thousands. It had a turret with several lenses and an inline section that allowed one to flip various filters in and out of the optical path, all in a waterproof housing.

Puddin'

The best way to start is as a part of a club effort, as *someone* there will have the necessary skills and be available as an advisor. I helped build such a telescope (an eight-inch Newtonian reflector) when I was young, and (aside from the overwhelming numbers of boys and men cramping my style) it was a very valuable and interesting experience. With care, and modern testing tools, you can easily achieve quality as good as or better than a commercial scope, so it may be worth doing even at the current low prices for reasonably good quality telescopes of all sorts.

I wouldn't try anything much more complicated than a Newtonian reflector the first time out of the gate, but then I'm not all that ambitious. Anything is possible with courage and determination, as long as it's coupled with access to good advise from somewhere.

Long focal length Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes are fairly popular to build for amateurs, because spherical lenses are fairly easy to test for quality control during grinding, so as long as a compact form factor isn't a requirement, they can be fairly cheap and easy to build. Having has the experience, I wouldn't be afraid to do it again, but am rather too lazy to start. They're cheap enough these days, in a bewildering variety of styles, that it's not worth the effort for me, but there is a certain satisfaction from making your own tools.

Puddin'

The heart of the Dobsonian telescope is really the simple (and cheap) altazimuth mount, but the classic Dobsonian is a simple Newtonian reflector, and doesn't have the good contrast one would prefer in a planetary scope because of the necessary central obstruction. I've seen folded designs used as "Dobsonians," most using some variation of the Yolo or Schiefspiegler design, which requires very careful mirror design to eliminate the coma and astigmatism that the off-axis "twist" builds in while it eliminates most of the typical diffraction errors which reduce contrast in the classical Newtonian. Everything's a tradeoff, but one can do serious planetary work with such a telescope.

The addition of a Poncet Platform or "rocker mount" -- or even driving the altazimuthal axes directly -- can add computerised tracking, so with the help of a computer even guided photography and "starfinding" is possible.

One notes that there are quite a few serious research telescopes built on altazimuth mounts these days, since computers are cheap. The twin Keck Telescopes, the world's largest optical and and infrared telescopes, are built around altazimuth mounts, for example, because equatorial mounting would be prohibitively expensive and probably impractical for such large mirrors in any case. One might, therefore, think of them as *really* big Dobsonians, or even Dobsonian binoculars, although it's most often used as an interferometer.

Puddin'