While I was awaiting delivery of a new CGEM, I made the mistake of visiting the new scope shope that opened up within lunch time driving range of work. I immediately noticed an large wooden tripod with Alt-Az T-Mount atop.

I've been looking out for a large Alt-Az mount for some time - for those nights when you don't intend to stay out too long. I wanted one capable of supporting a 152mm Refractor or the 9.25 inch SCT.

A strange thing happens when visiting the scope shop - I call it 'Scope Shop Psychosis'! The bank manager in my head seems to take a lunch break and suddenly I'm looking at binoculars at $199 and thinking - wow look at that, just $199 - yeah I'll have three of them!

In this case though it was the T-Mount. I made a quick decision (before the bank manager came back from lunch) and said yes please, I'll have one.

The stated load capacity is 15kg each side. Both my scopes weigh around 22 lbs without accessories. I setup the wooden tripod on the driveway and brought out the C9.25. It looked like it would be awkward to attach the scope to the Vixen Style saddle plate. But I found the best technique was to bear hug the scope and tip it into the wide open plate - then crank it down fast.

It felt odd pushing the 9.25 around without any counterweight attached. But the mount was quite stable. There is a small counter weight shaft on one siide and I purchased the small 7 lb mini-weight. This is really meant for the scope on that side which means it can move somewhat independantly. But I attached it and unlocked that side so that it would point down.

Moving the mount around felt odd but worked well. The motions were very smooth and I was using 180x on Venus and Mars. If you balance the scope carefully you can leave the locks off and just push it around. I had the scope a little front heavy and used the push to target, lock the clutches and then use the slow motion controls technique.

The real benefit came during breakdown. After detaching the scope there really was no breakdown - I just lifted the tripod with mount attached inside the garage. You can carefully fit the tripod with mount in a big Orion Scope bag and then into the car.

My driveway is uneven and I found two things happening. When pushing the scope around in Azimuth the tripod had a tendancy to skitter - just a little. Also the wooden legs slowly sank a couple of times - they need to be locked quite hard. But overall I was very pleased with how quickly I can be using scope without cables or power and no counter weight shaft to be attached (I just leave the mini-shaft attached and remove the small weight).

The tripod extends quite high and with the mount attached it puts the saddle plates at about the same height as my CGEM.

I did later experiment in the garage and attached the 9.25 SCT on one side and the 152mm Refractor on the other side. It held steady and was able to move around allright. But I've yet to try this in the field.

All in all I'm pretty happy having this option available now.